The Company of Darkness
by DancingPhalangess
Summary: While in Afghanistan Sam is wrenched away from the warzone she has come to know and thrown into a whole new kind of hell. Trapped in what she dreads beyond anything else, she waits. She might be waiting to live, or die. All she knows for sure is she is waiting alone.
1. Chapter 1

_It's dark because I have my eyes closed, _Sam told herself. She squeezed them tighter and willed herself to believe it. She wasn't really trapped in all consuming blackness, she could see in front of her, she could see every part of the brilliantly bright room if only she opened her eyes. She chanted it to herself over and over again until it became a whisper inside her head, repeating itself without her having to control it. For just a snatch of a second she believed it. The light would reach even the furthest corner if only she opened her eyes.

But then she tried to and remembered.

It enshrouded her, pulled her in so deep it was impossible to imagine a world without it. It was inside her too; it'd crept in while she wasn't paying attention, in one of the growing moments when her mind had slipped and had forgotten to guard itself. Now it festered, the rot spreading further and further.

The only company of the darkness was the steady, persistent _drip, drip, drip _of a leaking pipe she could not find. She wished she could, her tongue was so dry it stuck to her lips, but her better instincts told her she shouldn't drink it anyway. It could be anything. But that was a hard rule to follow when she opened her mouth and felt her lips crack.

They hadn't been for days. At first it had been every day, but then the visits had grown less and less frequent. They were punishing her silence with silence. So she kept her eyes closed because it was easier. It was easier on her weakened body, easier on her fragile mind, easier to cope with the darkness that paralysed her to the far corner of her tiny cell. So she hunched in the furthest corner from the door and kept them closed, her head buried in her knees for the excuse of no light behind her lids and she held in her scream.

They wanted her to scream, they'd told her that from the first day. If she would scream for them, beg, they might show her some mercy. Days had blurred together, one crushing into the other. It had been a Thursday when she was taken but it might have been Friday by the time she opened her eyes to the darkness. Saturday even. Or maybe it had still been Thursday. She had no way of knowing and without the sun the time that passed had no meaning.

She shifted and felt the dirt move with her. It was everywhere, impossible to escape from. Dirt clinging to her clothes, staining the uniform she had once been so proud of, dirt smeared to her face, creeping into her eyes until she blinked it away, dirt embedded underneath her fingernails, dirt crumbling from the walls, a colony on the floor she slept on. It crawled over her skin, even inside her mouth, taking what barest moisture it held.

A banging on the door that rang through all four walls of the cell made her want to both leap to her feet and shrink further into the wall, but she didn't trust her legs to support her and settled for glaring at the door, both wishing them away and willing them to come in. There were so many conflicting thoughts in her head that she wished her mind would finally cave to the lingering oblivion so she wouldn't have to make any decisions. But it was taken out of her hands as there was a creek and a crack of light spilled across the filthy floor. She couldn't help it, delight soared inside her at the tiny splash in her dark world.

A long figure stood at the doorway, nothing but a shadow to Sam's scrunched eyes. She blinked hard and forced her eyes open, refusing to let her natural reactions spoil the few glorious moments she had away from the dark. She didn't care who it was or what he wanted with her. It was a break in the silence. She saw him bend and then something rolled towards her across the stream of harsh yellow that looked to Sam as inviting as the sparkling sun on a mid-summer's day. "Can't have you dying on us now can we." She couldn't see him, the light was still too hard on her adjusted vision to make out anything absolute, but she knew he was grinning and not to be friendly. "At least not until we decide you should."

Sam caught it before it as it bounced off her foot and started to roll off back where it came from. Immediately she unscrewed the cap and raised the bottle to her lips, barely bothering to sniff it out for poison before gulping it down. It was only when she drained the last drop from the bottom and the plastic crunched under the pressure of her sucking mouth that she realised it should have been saved. She had no idea when they were going to bring her more. He'd said they weren't going to let her die, but now she was back under their control, relying on them to give her what she needed.

She'd just been so thirsty. Even as she stared down at the empty bottle in dismay she could hardly bring herself to regret it and she thought she was finally beginning to understand Dylan's drinking. Before she'd been taken she'd been thirsty. At the end of a long shift without time for a water break she'd been gasping for something to drink, but never like this. It wasn't an ache but a fire in her throat. Flames licked at the back of her mouth and all the way down to her chest where her heart ached.

Then he was stepping further into her prison, leaving the door propped open behind him so they were still bathed in the yellow glare. As Sam grew more and more used to the sudden banishment of the dark she was able to make out his features. A turned up nose that looked as if it had been broken, a small, circular scar on his right cheek, the tuft of black hair that made him look like a schoolboy whose mother still styled his hair. And blue eyes as vast and empty as the pit of the ocean.

She'd seen him on the day she'd been taken. He'd been there, his gun poised at Tony's temple so Sam hadn't dared to reach for her own. His bottomless eyes had mocked her as someone's hands had run over her body, taking every weapon and twisting her hair through their fingers to drag her along for the ride. She hadn't seen Tony again.

He pulled out another bottle from where it had been tucked into the pocket of his scuffed jeans and Sam reached for it instinctively, but he chuckled dryly and yanked it back from her feeble snatch. "You can have it if you give me something in return," he murmured, one side of his mouth curling into a grin that looked more like a snarl. Hunched against the wall she was eye-level with the growth in his trousers and immediately the burning in her throat intensified as the thirst was joined by a rush of bile. Sam choked it down and drew back her hand, holding it in a tight fist against her side.

Wonky Nose chuckled again. "Whatever you want, Princess," he said, spinning around and sending up a small cloud of dirt as he retreated with the water. She couldn't help the whimper that crossed her still parched lips when the door swung behind him, plunging her back under the cloak of blackness as if it had never been lifted. Her throat ached again, but that time with the impulse to call him back, if only because it meant she could have the light back for just a few more minutes.

But then she thought of what else she would have to do and she bit down so hard on her tongue to stop herself that she felt blood seep between her teeth. One more stain on her wrecked body.

She scrunched her eyes shut again and pressed her forehead into her knees, conjuring an image of Dylan to her mind. He would be the easiest person to have with her. He wouldn't insist on constant conversation and keeping up the mood and staying motivated, whatever torture was inflicted upon them next. They'd always been happy to sit in silence if they had nothing to say and fill it if they did. They'd never tried to force what wasn't there and it had both made and broken their marriage. But if he was there now he wouldn't mind if she locked her fingers through his in the dark, even if she wouldn't admit it was because she was struggling to hold off a panic attack.

But then she thought of the crushing dark, the men that came to drag her into a room she dreaded almost as much as her prison and the constant burning in her throat and she was so glad he didn't have to suffer it too. It was just her. That was both the sparkle of hope and the blackness that crept closer towards her every day.

She wondered, too, if he knew. Had she kept him as her next of kin? She couldn't remember. Their relationship was a blur of harsh words and pieces of paper she couldn't recall the titles of. If he didn't know would he think of her anyway? Perhaps he'd wiped her from his memory as soon as she'd walked out of the ED. If he _did_ know, did he think of her? Or perhaps she'd become such a spec in his mind that she'd been obliterated from his life long before she'd throw herself back into Helmand.

_Hell Land. _

**Look I wrote a thing. I'd call it a one shot but it's not, more a snippet of a longer story that I may or may not write depending on my mood/schedule/plot bunnies and general laziness. Also reader interest. So I'd love to know what you thought. **


	2. Chapter 2

**So I guess I'm continuing. But it's still in experimentation stages. **

After the man with the water there was nothing to break the darkness for a long time. Sam didn't know how long, she didn't count the hours. She had no way to, not unless she counted each second in her head and marked the minutes in the dirt. Even then she couldn't see them; she'd run out of space and have to move down the room. Then when it was covered she'd erase the proof of her existence she'd collected with every step she took. All she could do was guess at day or night by the intensity of the light when it did come. Harsher brightness meant it was dark outside, the light was artificial. When the glow was softer it was still day light. They didn't come often enough for her to log the days like this.

She thought she'd lose her fear after so long in the dark alone but it only seemed to intensify. The panic came closer to consuming her entirely each time they clicked the door shut behind them. It was the helplessness that she hated. She was trapped in it with no promise of eluding. The decision was out of her hands and she didn't know when she'd be out of it or if she ever would. And with that came vulnerability. Not only because she couldn't see what might be around her, but because she was at their mercy.

She tried not to show them that. She never knew when they would come so she didn't cry. If she felt tears prickling she wiped them away before they'd even begun to fall and whenever she heard the too gentle click of the lock she erased all expression. To look happy would be too false, to be afraid would be weak. She had to be nothing. If they couldn't read her it would infuriate them. They'd probably know she was terrified anyway but without the proof of her twisted mouth and the plea in her eyes they could only hope.

She didn't demand answers either. If they wanted her to know anything they'd tell her and if she asked it'd only give them power. She'd see the gleam in their cold eyes as she begged why she was there, what they wanted with her, what they were going to do, who were they. They had enough power and if she could win only small victories she'd take them if she could feel just that tiny slither less pathetic. She didn't ask her own questions and she didn't answer theirs, but she knew they would only take that for so much longer. They were giving her a chance, tricking her into trusting them, to thinking they might let her go if she told them what they wanted to know. They couldn't be all evil if they weren't torturing it out of her. But they would. Soon.

Something dripped onto her cheek and dribbled like a tear to the bottom of her chin where it fell to give the dry ground moisture she was not granted. Another followed it. She was sitting under a leak. _Should I drink it? _The thought was dismissed almost as quickly as it had come. It could be anything. It didn't burn her skin, but it might be water riddled with disease. They might want her to drink it and in taunt her with the medicine she'd need to keep her on the fringes of life; they'd give her a little in exchange for every answer.

The door creaked and a dusting of light sprinkled the floor, but did not quite touch Sam's corner. She jumped to her feet immediately, her hands curled into fists, poised for a fight. But there was just a thud and then a slam and the blackness was instant. The hopelessness almost made her crumble back to the floor, but a sound coming from it kept her standing. Something was scraping against the dust. There was another gentle thud and a whispered _shit. _Sam's fists shot in front of her, already protecting her face. Adrenaline pumped through her, ready to shoot out at anyone who attacked.

Squinting through the darkness she could see a figure almost as dark as the world around them, but Sam's eyes were used to the darkness and she could make out the shape of a man. He was taller than her and built more strongly, but he wasn't watching her. She had the advantage. At the same time as he finally scrambled off the floor she leapt at him, flinging him against the wall with her body pinning him to it.

His yell rung through the blackness, a cry of fear and surprise. A reaction Sam had not bargained for. Why was he so shocked if he was there to attack her? Unless he was acting so she would relax. Perhaps they wanted to gain her trust before they broke her as they were trying to do by not kicking the names of her team out of her. She drilled the pad of her thumb into his temple, keeping one arm pinned across his stomach and arms, digging in hard enough to compress his lungs. "I know just where to hit to make you forget every face you've ever seen." She twisted her thumb in harder. "Or perhaps you'd like to pay someone to wipe the dribble off your face."

The man just stared. He didn't even struggle beneath her. "You look different to the others. You're a woman."

"Well spotted," Sam spat. "That doesn't mean I can't take away your family with one punch."

"The wall outside my house," he said slowly, keeping his gaze trained her to face although it couldn't have properly adjusted to the lack of light, "is only four foot high." In a moment her feet were gone from beneath her and her arms were twisted behind her back and his hand was tight around the nape of her neck. The pain ceased all coherent thoughts. His hand had such a strong grip on her arm that she could feel the shape of each finger.

But then almost as quickly as he had sprung he released her and then she did collapse, slumping to the floor with colours dancing in her vision. "You're not them," he whispered, as if he were afraid his voice would awaken something in the darkest crevices of the cell. There was something shimmering on his fingers. Blood, Sam guessed. It took her a while to realise it was from her. With the knowledge came the stinging of the reopened wound they'd given her when they came with her food. The cost of survival, they had said.

"What is your name?" He wasn't one of those who had taken her, she was almost sure of it. But his voice sounded wrong. She didn't hear any at all unless it was accompanied by a stretch of brightness and a cold tremble of fear that she refused to cave to. She shouldn't hear one with the inky blackness still enshrouding her and a gentle tint that was beginning to lure her into calm. She didn't answer his question.

"I'm Leandro," he offered, "Leo if you're not going to break my neck." Sam lifted her head. He was sitting several feet away from her out of reaching distance. His hands were tucked behind his knees which were drawn towards him. She could attack before he had a chance to defend himself and it was that reason that kept her rooted to her spot. He was giving her the chance to win. He'd told her his name. They'd locked the door behind him.

"You're a prisoner," she told him.

"I'm enjoying the scenery," he said, not sarcastically. More as if he was correcting her. Sam smiled in the dark.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Surreal," agreed Leo.

o0o

When another bottle of water rolled across the crack of light spreading through the floor, Sam moved to take it before she remembered she was no longer the only one in the cell. She still jumped when Leo moved or spoke, but their words were few. Sam had barely had need to speak for so long that her voice scratched at her throat and his words sounded too strange. She was so tired anyway that it was an effort to speak. The advantage to her medical knowledge was she knew just what was happening. The disadvantage being she knew she had around two days left to get some water before her dehydration killed her.

But Leo was picking it up and unscrewing the cap. Sam stared as he took a short drink, feeling something fall away from her stomach that she couldn't explain. Then he recapped it then rolled it along the floor to her. She picked it up, rolled it around her palms and the thing missing resettled itself. He hadn't taken a lot, less than a quarter. Just enough to keep him going until they got some more in hours or days to come. They'd come sooner now Leo was there too. She'd already figured out they didn't want to kill her, at least not yet. They wanted names from her first, other prisoners, and then they wanted it to be slow.

"You've been here longer than I have," Leo offered as a way of explanation. "You've got to be in worse shape." Sam didn't argue, although she hated that description. She knew from the cracks in her lips, the headache piercing her skull and the constant ache of eyes that wanted to close that she was. She didn't intend to drink all of it, but once she had started she didn't stop. It was too soothing against her torn throat. And when the last drop was gone a roll of dread flipped through the pit of her heart. She was back at the end of their mercy.

"How often do they come?"

Sam shrugged, then muttered, "I don't know," when she realised he couldn't see her. "You lose track of time, there's no way to keep up," she expanded after a pause. Leo didn't say a word and the two fell back into silence.

It both comforted Sam and left her with a gaping, aching loneliness that Leo was there. He was company and he was kind and it made her feel a little less vulnerable huddled in the dark knowing she had someone else to fight. But his shape was unfamiliar, his voice was that of a stranger and it only reminded her of what she had once had. What she could have still had and would never get back. It was like having a lover she could see only twice per year; some would say it was better than nothing at all, and anyone who was in the depths of it would say the same. Only someone who'd had such a lonely relationship taken from them would realise it was far less painful to go without.

The ache grew so strong that she curled into herself to quench it, glad that Leo could not see her. But his eyes would soon adjust as well as hers had done and then there would be no hiding.

Sam's eye lids snapped open at the sudden brightness behind them and they stung painfully, immediately wanting to close again. It was the same man who had offered her a second bottle of water. Wonky Nose. And before he'd even opened his mouth she knew from the bottle dangling from his left hand what he was going to say. He didn't look at her, but at Leo. "You can have this, and more every day, as much as you need." The light was still too harsh to make out her cell mate's reaction, but she was sure he'd be sceptical. He'd know they wanted something too. "If she gives me what I want."

Sam didn't have to look at Wonky Nose to know he was watching her, but eventually she did. She lifted her head so her gaze met his with flames of hatred licking inside it. "Fuck you," she spat.

Wonky Nose only chuckled. He crouched so he was level with her and she kept her stare on him, as if breaking the contact for even a moment would mean her own death. She didn't even break it when he leaned in so close she thought he was going to steal what she wouldn't give. She tasted cinnamon. "Exactly princess." He grinned and the pad of his thumb glided along her jaw. She swatted it so hard that the slap bounded from the four walls. He chuckled again and stood and at last his back was facing her.

And then her gaze was at last broken when she saw nothing but his figure blur before she fell hard against the dirt coated floor and her head exploded with spasms of agony. She didn't see the light go out, only heard the door slam and Leo's voice calling out to her. "Miss?" She didn't want to answer him. She'd failed to get them both what they needed, but she could hear him shuffling towards her and wanted him to touch her even less.

"What?" She shot, bluntly.

He laughed, gently. Nothing like the dark chuckle that Wonky Nose had directed at her. "I just wondered if you were okay, crazy girl."

"Crazy?" Sam raised her eyebrows, even though he couldn't see. Slowly the cell was coming back into focus. The eternal darkness fell back around her vision.

"You attacked me the first time we met," he reminded her and a smile tugged at her lips.

"What do you expect when you burst into a woman's room uninvited?" She struggled to push herself up, brushing away Leo's offered hand. For the first time she was glad of the dark. The tilting room was far less obvious and she swallowed down her nausea.

"Well I'm afraid all the time you're withholding your identity, I only know you as crazy."

Sam tried to roll her eyes, but it hurt. She was tired. She guessed it was late because the indoor light had been on when the door was opened, but she knew she couldn't sleep until she was sure that was the only reason for wanting to.

"So what were you doing when you were invited the join the party?" She heard Leo's breath catch.

"I was on my way to assess a soldier when the truck was attacked. They took me and left the driver. They asked me for names and then they put me in here where I was attacked by a mad girl in outsized clothing."

"I didn't chose the outfit," Sam protested. They had chosen it for her. She'd been dragged into a plain, bare room with drapes over the windows and thrown the bundle at her. They'd demanded she change right there and then with at least four men watching her. They could have torn the uniform off her themselves, but they much preferred to watch her have to take off her own identity, stripping her of her pride and power. There had been underwear in the bundle too.

"So you're a psychiatrist?" She asked in a way of changing the subject.

Leo nodded. "What about you? Soldier?"

"Doctor." She brushed her fingers along the side of her head. It was dry but even that gentle pressure caused a hiss of pain. "Maybe they're recruiting a team." It was a terrible joke, but somehow it eased the dread just a hair-width fraction. It was not that she believed it, more the mocking that stole a little power from their captors.

**Question: does anyone have any preferences on whether I should keep this story only to Sam and what's happening here, or should I branch out and write either memories or even flit to what's going on in the ED, if everyone knows she's missing/how they're coping etc. I do have ideas and things, but the general plot outline I have is flexible enough so I can fit in other POV's if anyone would prefer. **


	3. Chapter 3

**I actually finished this a while ago and just forgot to post. Sorry about that. But I have decided to go with the odd visit to the ED and its people. It will not be an even split, writing Sam is far more interesting, but I'll dabble there every now and again to see what's happening and how everyone's getting on with knowing what's happened (I say as if I don't write this thing.)**

**I really appreciate everyone's reviews and favourites etc. It's good to know I'm not just sat here writing to myself. Not that there's much wrong with that, I've written heaps of things that I've never posted, but I digress. **

_Her last day at Holby had not been nearly as eventful as her first. It had even been quiet in the ED, as it sometimes was, as if everyone deliberately conspired together to have accidents on the same day just to inconvenience the staff. She'd spent the majority of her lunch break with patients as if a the very idea of a break would cause her to wither into nothing. Dylan had been his usual self, short with her and there to argue with almost everything she said, bring her down every time she took a step up. _

_It had even been in anger she had told him she was going back to war. He was the only one she wanted to know and she'd cornered him at the end of his shift as he gathered his things from his locker, but he hadn't been in a mood to listen. "What do you want, Sam?" He'd snapped as soon as he saw her. "I do have a life outside of this hospital you know." It had stung but she hadn't argued back that he had better not waste his time on her as she'd wanted to. He needed to know she was leaving and he needed to hear it from her. _

"_I-that was my-", the words had stuck in her throat, suddenly impossible to get out, although she had been muttering them to herself all day in attempt to make that easier. Her patients must have thought she had escaped the psychiatric ward. _

_Rather than waiting for her, Dylan had just rolled his eyes and tried to brush past, but she'd stepped into his path before he could reach the door. "I'm sure whatever it is can wait until tomorrow. I have a dog to walk." That time he had tried to physically move her out of the way and Sam had thrown him off with a sudden rush of anger born from her hurt. _

"_No it can't because tomorrow I will be in Afghanistan!" He'd stared at her for such a long time she started to think time itself had frozen. _

"_Right, well, good. Next time you come back, please make sure it's not here." The time she didn't resist as he shifted her aside and stormed out of the door. It had barely slammed behind him before the tears fell. She didn't even feel the heat of shame as they leaked down her cheeks and the worry that someone might walk in was only a tickle in the back of her mind. After everything that was all he had to say to her. _

_Good._

_She'd closed her eyes and tried to force the circling words out of her head, but they had been lodged there on a harsh, vicious repeat. At least it had settled the buzzing doubt in her mind that she'd been doing the right thing. She knew then that she was. Leaving was what he wanted and it was what she needed. At least amidst explosions and gunfire she could forget that there wouldn't be anyone anxiously jumping at every ring of the doorbell in case they found an officer in a beret. She would return to a loud base, a far cry from the empty walls of her flat. She wouldn't have to see the glare of her ex-husband or listen to his silence any longer. _

_She'd drawn a deep, shuddering breath then and swallowed down the rest of her tears. It would do her no good to fall apart now. In the morning she would return to war and she had to be alert. She had to fall back into her role as a tough, no nonsense Major. She'd almost smiled at the thought. They all thought she was so brave. Her team in Afghanistan, the staff at the ED. She was strong, they said. She was tough. But they didn't realise that she was the biggest coward of all. She ran from war back to her husband, and now she was running from him back to war. Whatever was easiest. Never stick around to feel the pain. _

_She risked her life every day but never really did anything that scared her. The thought of dying was a distant one. She almost assumed it would never happen to her and the rational part of her that knew it could forced it to the back of her mind so it was barely even something she considered. The things that truly frightened her stayed buried deep in the pits of her mind she never dug up. _

A bang jolted Sam out of her sleep. She shot up in the same moment as her eyes opened and groaned at the immediate spike of pain through her head. For once, she was glad of the dark that meant she couldn't see the room lurch. Leo was up too, she could hear him shuffling beside her, scrambling to get to his feet. Sam pulled herself up slowly, her nails digging into the rough dirt walls.

Before she could register what had woken her there was a rough hand on her arm, so soaked in sweat that it slipped down her skin. Sam flinched. She was used to bodily fluids, but coming from one of them it was dirty and she could already feel it clinging to her, soaking into her paws and seeping through her body. Filth that she would never be rid of. She twisted her arm, throwing off his hand and leapt away, but a horribly familiar click froze her against the wall.

"If you don't do things my way, I'll put a bullet through his skull and feed you his brains." Sam faltered, her body crumbled, useless and weak. Grinning in triumph the man led her through the door. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd last been out of her prison, the minutes had blurred beyond recognition long ago, but she knew it had been long enough so she couldn't even open her eyes with the sudden light. She stumbled blindly with the man shoving her from behind.

She had never seen him before. His hair was jet black and rested on his head in curls. His eyes were darker than the others and his nose perfectly straight. Dark stubble coated his milky brown skin and he had a habit of touching it as if to draw attention there. _Look at me, _he seemed to want to say, _I'm old enough to grow a beard. _But the firm grip he'd had as he'd drilled the barrel of the gun into Leo's head told her he was anything but a boy.

Sam tripped and would have fallen if Beard Face hadn't had her arm twisted in his hold. She hated that more than she would have hated to have him watch her tumble. She walked up the short flight of stairs and then they stopped. Sam cracked open her eyes. They still protested painfully against the brightness, but she could see, if only blurred shapes and mixed colours.

There was another man with them. No, not man. This one really was a boy. He had just ghosts of stubble brushing his chin that he probably didn't even need to shave. He was short too, and skinny. He didn't look strong. If she was left alone with him she could overpower him easily. But then what? There would be more men, Wonky Nose, Beard Face and who knew how many more. Not to mention a gun pressing into Leo's temple. Even if she escaped there was nowhere to run too. She was fairly sure she was still in Afghanistan, but even that was mere guesswork. Her radio and mobile were long gone.

She was suddenly thrust towards the boy who looked just as startled as she felt. His hands caught her, but they were more gentle than his associate's. "Here you go, someone to finally loose it too," Beard Face sneered. The boy gaped at him, his gaze flickering fearfully between him and Sam.

"I-I don't-"

"Don't worry," Beard Face interrupted. "She'll be a good little girl."

Something was screaming inside her head to fight. Punch them. Run. Scream. But helplessness was drowning her. She could do nothing without getting Leo killed and he shouldn't die, not for her. They weren't planning to kill her, not if she didn't struggle.

Beard Face seized the kid by the scruff of his tattered green shirt and threw them both into a small, grubby room. There were black smears across the walls, Sam noticed. The window was blocked by an equally filthy sheet. There was a nail sticking up from the floorboards in the top left corner. There was a dead bird right beside it. There was a mattress but not a bed, covered with a holey blanket and a single, threadbare pillow. A half empty glass of water stood beside it. She could not escape.

The door clicked shut behind them, the sound far too gentle for what was happening. Sam would almost have preferred it if it had slammed; the sound would have made it more wrong somehow, more forceful. It would have made her less helpless against a grotty room and a kid no older than eighteen. He let her go as soon as they were alone. Sam noticed she was taller than he was. She took a step towards the wall, close to the dead bird, and he didn't follow. He watched her with an expression knitted into fear. She returned it with a glare. If he was scared enough he might not hurt her.

But then his hands curled into fists at his side and something harder changed his features. "We'll both get a beating if I don't." He swallowed. His Adam's apple wasn't even fully grown. "If you say yes it isn't-I don't have to-" He broke off and Sam could almost hear his teeth gritting together. A loud, out of place laugh sounded from below them. "We both do it to save ourselves," he said more firmly, resolved.

_Do it, _Sam told herself. _Agree and it will just be sex. _But even as he moved towards her she pressed herself against the pale wall. "Come on, please," the boy begged.

"How old are you?" Sam blurted. It wasn't what she meant to say. She hadn't meant to say anything at all. But looking at the ghost of stubble on his face it was impossible to think of anything else.

"Nineteen," he told her without blinking. Sam nodded, her eyes fluttered closed for a moment and shot open again as she remembered where she was. There was less of an age gap between them than there had been between her and Dylan. Sam struggled to push the thoughts from her mind, hating herself for even putting them there. Dylan was nothing like this man.

His hands were shaking now.

"Please say yes," he whispered.

Sam shook her head. She wanted to. She wanted it to just be sex. But she knew it didn't matter what word came out of her mouth, the answer would still be no. He didn't want to do it, if she put up enough fight he'd relent, but if she caved that made her just as bad as him, as them.

"Pretend," he blurted out so suddenly that Sam was sure she hadn't heard him. "Scream," he told her. "Beg a little. If they think I'm…then neither of us will get hurt."

She felt herself nod. It was the best plan they had. Certainly better than having sex with him. But she hated the idea of begging. She'd be giving them what they wanted, they'd think they had power over her. She'd planned to not make a sound. If he didn't touch her though, how would they win? They'd think they had and that would just make them bigger fools. She nodded again, more firmly.

She felt foolish, but it was the last thing to be worrying about. The laughter downstairs stopped when she let out her first scream. She heard the silence in her own, during the gaps. She screamed again, over and over until her throat ached. And then she switched to pleading. All the while the boy stood there, his hands clamped over his ears as if her pleas were real. Sam felt a disturbing and misplaced jab of sympathy for him. He was one of them, but he was far more reluctant, far less brutal. He didn't want to hurt her. Perhaps he was as much of a victim as Leo was.

_Leo. _Sam almost stopped her cries mid-word. He would be able to hear everything. Would she tell him it had all been fake or would it be safest to let him think it had been real too? What if the others were listening when she told him? What if she couldn't trust him? Sam pushed those thoughts from her mind and begged again. She thumped her fist against the wall as if she were struggling. And again. All the while the boy's hands continued to block her out.

When her voice was too raw and her hands throbbing she stopped. She was gasping, her legs shaking as if it had not been a performance. She felt almost as if it wasn't. The boy was trembling too.

"You'll have to slap on a grin," Sam told him. "It's your turn to pretend."

He just nodded and started towards her. Sam flinched. "I have to…take you back," he stammered, his hand closing around her arm. She didn't try and resist as he led her out of the room and back down the stairs. She kept her head high and gaze steely. They'd be expecting that from her. It was a defence too. She'd have that little victory, even if they thought they had won the battle.


	4. Chapter 4

Leo didn't move when the boy led her back into their cell. He didn't throw her as his companions had done, and it almost felt like a betrayal. She'd come to expect the treatment and bruises, she braced herself for landing hard and found she didn't fall at all. It hurt, but she knew what to expect. But this boy had thrown that completely and it flung her deeper into the depths of the vulnerability she refused to acknowledge.

Sam pressed her back against the first wall she touched, feeling the comfort of something solid behind her and with a watchful gaze that could barely penetrate the darkness, she stared out at the rest of the cell. She could see his form by the door, as if he had been trying to escape through it when she had returned.

"They brought us some more water," he said through the darkness and seconds later something hit her leg. Sam picked it up and unscrewed the cap, but she barely felt the liquid trickle down her throat. She took another sip through obligation but then replaced the lid and let it clatter to the floor.

"Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

"No. I'm fine." Sam was surprised at the strength of her voice. It was loud and seemed to spread through the space of the entire room.

She felt tired suddenly, more than tired; a bone aching exhaustion that couldn't have been from standing in a dingy room for ten twenty minutes. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd last left her cell before being forced up the stairs, but it can't have been so long that the sort journey would have drained her. But all she wanted to do was curl on the dust soaked floor and blot out the darkness with the colours of dreams for hours and hours.

But as soon as she closed her eyes it was the sharp image of the boy's crumpled face that filled her mind and they shot open again, for once glad of to see the blackness. She pushed her tooth into her lip and crushed herself into a smaller shape to feel the soft comfort of her own body. She heard Leo moving, gentle and slow until he was beside her and she tensed as if to throw herself away, but he settled down on his back and she made out the outline of his features as he turned his head towards her.

"Do you want me to tell you a bedtime story?" he asked with a smile in his voice that wasn't quite mocking.

Sam raised her eyebrows. "A bedtime story?" she parroted. She hadn't heard one of those since she was seven and her mother had read her _Winnie the Pooh. _

"Sure, you're never too old for a story, and it sure is better than this." He certainly had a point there. He could recite the dictionary and she would probably listen if it would take her out of the pitch black cell, even if that place was a mind dead with boredom.

Leo took her silence as a yes.

"Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four Privet Drive were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved with anything strange or mysterious, because they just did not hold with such nonsense."

Sam frowned. "Isn't this _Harry Potter?" _she interrupted.

"Of course," Leo exclaimed, as if she had just asked if he loved his first born child. "What better story is there?"

"Please don't tell me you know the entire book by heart."

"Don't be stupid, that would be ludicrous. I only know the occasional passage. I have a son, he loves them. Makes me read him a chapter every night. Must have been through the whole series about nine times."

_Son. _The slight ease of despair gave way in an instant to a fresh, sharper wave of helplessness. She was supposed to return people to their families. It was her job to save them and make sure they went home, yet Leo was right beside her and there was nothing she could do for him.

"I'm Sam," she whispered, as if saying the words any louder would ruin them.

Her companion smiled. "Right then, Sam, if you'd please not interrupt me. But the Dursleys had a secret and their greatest fear was that they would one day be found out. They couldn't stand to have anyone know about the Potters…"

His voice continued, and although Sam stopped listening to the words, just the sound of it seeped into the gaping hole inside her. It was soft and delicate, but it filled her and with something there it was easier to close her eyes. The boy's face didn't return, her head clouded instead with images of boy wizards and scarlet trains, and a little boy curled in a car shaped bed, listening to the same words pour from the mouth of his daddy, soothing him into a warm and gentle sleep.

…

The burning flames of thirst raged in his throat, but Dylan knew they wouldn't be extinguished with a glass of water. He dulled them by working in every waking moment and only returning to his boat when he was so exhausted that he could barely see the road in front of him. Even Dervla was not used to spending so much time alone, but she had come to expect the strange hours of her walks and didn't seem to resent him for it. He had explained to her, of course, why she had the boat to herself for so long.

The flames had flared as soon as the officer had appeared in the hospital and he knew there was no hope of them fading until Sam was back where he could see her, safe and alive. They burned the hottest when he tried to sleep. He'd go as many hours as he could at work, but sooner or later he was either sent home or removed himself when he could no longer even figure out the most simple of cases. But then would come the hours where he would close his eyes and see her and it was the only time he wished he couldn't.

He had always kept himself at a distance from Sam's army career. While they were married he didn't talk about it unless she did and ignored her deployment dates for as long as possible. He tuned out of her stories (he saw enough of her putting herself in the firing line without having the background of a war zone to imagine with it) and merely grunted at any of her army friends who showed up on the doorstep. He knew almost nothing of her career and had always had little imagination, but neither of those seemed to matter anymore.

He didn't know the army, but he knew people. He saw some of the worst of humanity in the ED, women stumbling in sobbing and beaten, children who flinched every time their parents made a sudden movement, trembling girls who couldn't even choke out their own name, grown men bleeding from gunshot wounds but still struggling ferociously to get up, so terrified that bleeding out was a better prospect. Every scared, abused patient took on Sam's features, her long hair, her piercing glare. And he saw Sam herself, as petrified as them, trapped in the dark that he knew would be sending her crazy with terror.

All he could do was let the flames burn him rather than extinguish them in the agonizing hope that she would one day need him and for that he had to be there, not blinded by alcohol. And at night he left the bulb blazing on the ceiling, even though she was not there to take comfort in it and prayed that, wherever she was, there was at least a light switch.

…

Sam jolted awake, pain exploding through her, centring to a dull tearing ache in her stomach. The door was wide open and natural light flooded the cell. Sam's attacker grinned down at her. Wonky Nose. "Morning, princess," he snarled and aimed another kicked. She blocked it and his boot crushed her fingers instead, twisting them upon themselves so she yelled anyway.

Her instincts screamed at her to fight, but her brain was clouded with sleep and they were all around her. She couldn't see Leo. Then she was on her feet with a fistful of her hair in Beard Face's hand. Her own hands flew to her scalp to ease the pressure, but he shook her violently and the pain would have crippled her if he hadn't been holding on.

How had she slept through the invasion? Wonky Nose was there with Beard Face and two strangers. She should have woken up as soon as they brushed against the door. She should have heard their footsteps approaching. There was a time when she was married to Dylan, after she had returned from her first tour, where she would jolt awake and leap for her gun if next door's car pulled up outside. It had driven him mad and he'd even threatened to drag her to a psychiatrist before she'd learned to control it enough to not wake him.

She was jerked out of the distraction as she stumbled, pulled along by a wrenching at her scalp. More hands shoved into her back and she lashed out until someone else grabbed her injured fingers and twisted them until she whimpered. She pressed her lips together as soon as the sound had escaped. She had no other control than not letting them know they had hurt her.

Eventually she was pulled and pushed into a room she had not seen before. It was entirely empty with a lone window at the very top of the wall, almost touching the ceiling. Despite the pain, Sam felt a crashing relief. It wasn't dark. But at the same time, terror burned through her. Leo was nowhere in sight and the rough, multiple hands grappling her body assured her that she wasn't being taken for a hot mug of tea and a biscuit.

She hoped they'd let go of her when they were inside, but the fingers in her hair twisted tighter and her hand was crushed in the giant paw of her second captor. She bit back a groan. Then she heard a gentle click and knew without turning around, or feeling the pressure on her head, that there was a gun burrowing into the back of her skull. The pressure increased until her legs buckled, but the hand in her hair yanked her straight.

"Give us a reason," someone breathed in her ear, "not to pull the trigger. You would. You do it every day. You murder person after person and dress it up with your gift wrap and bows, acting like you're trying to do us a favour." Sam tried to shake her head, but it was wrenched sharply backwards as soon as she moved and a spike of electricity shot up her neck and through her skull. "How many is it now?"

The gun had shifted. It was pressed hard enough against her temple to leave a groove.

"I'm a doctor," she gasped, struggling to keep seeing through the haze of pain. "I save people." She longed for it to be true. She wanted it to be so much that she squeezed her eyes shut to will it so, but the doubt crept into her voice. The murmur in her ear morphed into a growl.

"But you have killed. You sign a little piece of paper that promises you will, it says you'll be willing to kill. You would be, and you have." The speaker leaned in so close she felt the wetness of his lips against her ear. "What was his name?" _They couldn't know. They were playing with her. Torturing her. _

The gun burrowed deeper.

Sam kept her eyes closed.

"You're not good," was the last whisper before the gun was gone, but there was no time for a breath of relief before it slammed hard into her skull and the hands in her hair and crushing her fingers let go. Just as quickly as she had fallen, she was yanked to her feet by her shirt. The stranger holding it twisted it tight so it cut into her neck. There was a blackness in her vision, a pounding in her head.

"Lift up your right leg," the one holding her shirt snarled.

"What?" Sam gasped.

"Lift. Up. Your. Leg."

She gasped again, struggling to find just a little breath, but her shirt was slicing into her neck, making it impossible to breathe. The blackness grew. Warm blood trickled down the side of her head. Very slowly, she eased her leg up behind her and tried to focus on a single point on the floor to help herself stay upright, but everything was a blurred, spinning mess. She wobbled and felt rather than saw her captor's grin.

"If you drop it," he murmured, his breath tickling her skin as if he were mocking her lack of air, "We'll shoot you." Then the gun was placed back against her temple, the barrel slipping through the blood.

The all too familiar pump of adrenaline shot through her veins, but that time it was met with pure, gripping terror. Risking her life had never scared her. She either hadn't cared, or had thought herself invincible. But this was so utterly out of her control. There was no button to press to release the parachute, there was no wire to keep her from tumbling through the sky, there was nothing wrapped so tightly around her waist it caught her breath. It was just her and a madman, his chuckling spectators gathered around like men at a zoo.

Then he let go of her shirt.

She stumbled, hopped forward, her arms grappling through air with nothing to hold onto, but somehow she stayed up. She tried to blink away the blackness, staring at one smear on the floor but it kept fading out of focus. Whatever was holding her up it wasn't herself. She wasn't a part of her own body, but she wasn't viewing it either. She was somewhere between the blurred lines of her own world and another.

There was a faint tingling on her arm and she could smell cigarettes in the air, but nothing properly registered. She barely even felt it when her leg buckled and she collapsed, her arms not even shooting out to break her fall. What did it matter about broken bones when she would so soon be dead? She didn't feel the hard wood floor. And she only heard the soft click of the trigger.

**It's up to you if you review, but just so you know, it's my birthday week, so I feel this should influence your decision. **


	5. Chapter 5

**Thanks to all my anonymous reviewers. I can't obviously send you guys a personal message, but I really appreciate the feedback. **

**And to clear up confusion, yes, this is Sam in Afghanistan. She's being held as a POW. **

It took Sam several dazed seconds to realise she could still feel the floor below her. The pain still throbbed in her fingers, her head, her neck, her ribs. And she could still hear them. They're booming laughs and too loud breaths. She could smell the stale stench of sweat, the musty reek of dust. The prickling, suffocating heat pressed in on her from every angle. One sure fact began to set into her mind, although she couldn't see how it could be true when she could feel the cold pressure of the gun at her head. She was still alive.

She wasn't breathing though. It was as if her body had responded to her 'death' and the oxygen had been drawn from her lungs. It took her a while to realise her eyes were shut. Something was screaming at her inside to open them; she was too vulnerable curled on the floor without being able to see. But at the same time she was convinced if she did, time would restart and she would be dead. It wasn't rational and it made no sense, but neither did being alive.

But then her lungs began to scream out for air and without deciding to do it, she was gasping for breath. The laughter grew. Her eyes shot open and instead of fading, reality came into sharper focus. She could see the crack that ran several inches across the wooden floor and the brown stain she had focused on standing on her leg. From here she could see it was blood. Of course it could be innocent. Someone might have cut their finger, or stepped on a nail. But Sam felt a tingling horror in her stomach and knew it wasn't.

It what been as deliberately drawn as the blood from her own arm as the captor she had never seen sliced through her skin with a knife that seemed to come from nowhere. Her cry was more shock than pain, but they still revelled in the sound of it. She saw their grins twist their expressions into evil and the blood that ran from the wound dripped to join the stain from the person that had been there before. Had they been tortured in the same way as her? And the question that caused the blood to trickle frozen down her skin: where were they now?

They were speaking to her, she thought. They demanded names, other murderers, but she could barely remember her own through the haze of pain and terror that had her paralysed to the ground as they carved into her skin. And they were going to hurt her no matter what she said. She could give them the name of every soldier she had ever met and they'd hurt her anyway, because she was one of them. A killer.

It was right there engraved onto her arm when she finally turned her head to look. At the sight of the shimmering letters, leaking streams of blood her stomach heaved and she twisted her face back to the ceiling. "What's the matter, princess, can't bear to see the truth?" All Sam could do in her own defence was shake her head. She wasn't a killer, not like they thought, but they were right about one thing. She had killed someone. She'd left a little boy fatherless when the man had only been trying to plead for her help. That was the part of the guilt that almost drowned her, even more than a year later. He had asked her help, asked her to save him as she was supposed to do and she had shot him.

Whatever the army said about collateral damage, or however Dylan dismissed it as 'war', she would never forgive herself for that. And perhaps that was why she didn't fight as he dug the knife in to write the final letter that would brand her for what she was.

…

The cell was empty when they flung her back into it, but she still didn't give way to the tears that begged to fall. Crying would change nothing. It wouldn't make them kinder, it wouldn't keep her or her cellmate safe, it wouldn't bring them a rescue or water that her throat screamed for. It would be weak and nothing more than a cave to her own self-pity. She focused instead on the burning sting in her arm. They had thrown alcohol on it when they were done carving the wound and she hadn't been able to trap her cries.

It would scar, she was sure. Not only marking the darkest part of her, but it would be there for all eyes. She could wear long sleeves, coat it with make-up or wrap it in a bandage, but it would still be there and it would never stop burning. She'd have to explain it to anyone who was close enough to see, either tell them what had happened or let them continue with what everyone would think- that she had done it to herself. The words seemed to dig deeper, stinging to intensely she had to bite down her on her lip until she tasted blood to stop herself from crying out loud. She hated it. She wanted to rip it from her skin, because at least then the scars would be at her own hand, under her control.

At least there had been water when she had returned. And food too. The crusty end of a loaf of bread and a pile of dry, unidentified cereal. But it had been the first she'd had in longer than she'd had the ability to count and she'd had to force herself, her doctor brain taking over, to eat it slowly so her body could process it. But half way through her chewing had slowed until she'd let the bread in her hand fall to the floor, lost to the dust. What she had already swallowed churned inside her stomach.

What was the point in something that was only going to keep her at their mercy for longer?

Why bother with food when the pain and weakness grew every day?

Why cling on to return to a life where she had nothing?

There would be no one twisting their hands beside a phone, pleading for it to ring with even just a chance of some news. There would be no one pacing at the airport to sweep her into their arms as soon as she set foot back in England. There would be no one frantically fixing every last item into place to build a home for when she returned. Leo had his wife, his children. What did she have to go back to? An empty flat with failed heating and morning fruit smoothies; perhaps a new job in an anonymous hospital where she would blend amongst the staff without meaning anything to anyone.

There was no one around to watch, so she let the helplessness consume her, curling her body into the tightest ball she could make it and clinging to every part of herself she could reach in the desperate hope that the warmth of her own flesh would bring her some comfort. She was pathetic, but too tired to care. Fighting it was meaningless, it would only come back, the all-consuming bitter pain that delighted in dragging her under. It would come again and the battle was just so hard. Too hard to fight again in the empty cell with only darkness for company.

…

She didn't take her head out of her knees when the door opened again, but a dull thump told her Leo was back. As soon as the darkness returned she called out to him, her voice muffled and quiet. She was sure they wouldn't kill him. They wouldn't kill either of them, not until they had played around with them a little more, broken them down to nothing but imprints of themselves. Then they'd keep them around a little longer still. And only when they were reduced to so little that it didn't even hurt to live anymore, they would kill them.

"Sam!" The always calm, often cheerful tone had vanished from his voice. It was thick and strained as if his face was streaked in tears. There was something almost fearful in there. "You're not dead." It seemed like such an obvious statement that she had to bite back a laugh. It was clear from the tremor she could hear that it was not the time for mockery.

"Alive and well," she confirmed.

"But I heard the gunshot. They were asking me all these questions and said if I didn't answer they'd kill you. I knew they still needed us both so I called their bluff but then I heard the shot-" he broke away and then Sam only heard a strangled gasp through the darkness.

"I thought they'd killed me too," she whispered, knowing he could hear her.

Then, after a pause: "Are you all right?"

"They did something to my shoulder," Leo replied. "I think it's dislocated, but there isn't a whole lot I can do about that."

"I can." A rush of europhia expanded inside her, bathing her in a glow of excitement. She wasn't helpless. It wasn't as easy as it was in the ED where there was pain medication and beds to perch on, and best of all, light, but her eyes had adjusted well enough to be able to make out his shape. She lifted him away from the wall, checking carefully for broken bones and when she was as sure as she could be that there were none, she took his arm, gently rotating it around as she talked, the distraction of chatter being the only aesthetic she could provide. With a quiet pop and a much louder grunt of pain from him, it was back in place.

Leo's hand shot to it in surprise. He tried a couple of experimental movements. "You're magic," he told her seriously.

Sam smiled. "Magic," she agreed.

Leo's smile faded suddenly, dropping from his face like a stone into water. "You're hurt," he pointed out.

Sam unsuccessfully wiped the blood from the side of her head, only achieving in smearing it further. "I'll live," she assured him. She knew at least that she wasn't concussed, but Leo wasn't reassured.

"I can't help you," he said, speaking more to the empty walls than her.

"Don't worry about it," she dismissed. "I can't help me either."

There was nothing she could do to fix the too wide gap between herself and Dylan, or get herself out of there, or sooth the searing pain that had been a part of her so long she doubted she knew how to function without it. She couldn't even tell Zoe she was sorry.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

Sam shrugged. "I never was very good at comfort."

If she had been, perhaps she'd have been able to save so many more. Perhaps she would even have been able to wake up to a brush of sunlight across her bed that wasn't pushed aside by the glaring light of the bulb overhead. Perhaps she would have seen the quiet desperation in a stranger's eyes as he reached for his inhaler so he could breathe for his son. Perhaps she would have been able to knit together the frayed threads of her marriage; convince the boy with the emerald eyes to buy one more coffee.

But her mother was dead, she was a murderer, the electricity bill climbed, Dylan was the ghost of another life and the last coffee had grown a crust of mould.

"I prefer to cut off and run," she said.

**The ending to this wouldn't come to me until 2am on a Monday morning, so as I result I had already written most of the next chapter before this was complete. **

**And thanks for all of the birthday well wishes. **


	6. Chapter 6

**Well it's 1.12 in the morning, and apparently my life has now reached a point where that is too early to sleep. So I shall engage in some late night writing instead, because it's the best kind there is. **

For the second time in twenty four hours, Sam was being dragged up the stairs towards the filthy room that was becoming more dreaded than her cell. That time they were not even giving her a chance to walk herself, but two sets of fingers entwined themselves through the tangles of her hair and hurled her up each step with an agonising thump. The pain in her skull was tilting on unbearable. It pounded with the giant stomps of steel bottomed shoes, a souvenir from the night before, and her hair was straining against it with such a force that she was sure it would be ripped right from her head.

They shoved her inside, and with her wrists bound behind her back with harsh metal wire, she could not break her fall. She could only twist her body so she landed hard on her shoulder and the binds cut through her flesh, soaking the rusting silver in crimson. Sam forced the pain away and struggled to sit up, suddenly terrified of lying out on the floor, vulnerable to everything aimed her way.

There was a muffled crying and she swung her head around so suddenly that she heard a strange grinding sound and felt a burning shot through her neck. The source of the quiet sobbing was a woman; wearing only thin slips of underwear and streaked in filth, her arms were pulled so tightly behind her back that the bones popped at the skin on her shoulders and her gagged face was gleaming in the sweat of agony. Sam could see the slight absence of dirt where her tears had fallen.

Then she felt another burning wave through her neck when someone snapped it back with a fistful of hair. "We're going to do it a little differently today," a mocking voice sang in her ear. "You get to watch her get punished for your mistakes instead."

Sam shook her head, as if it would somehow unwrap the binds from the woman's hands and give her the chance to run. "That's defiance," Sing-Song Voice chirped and before Sam could even scream, the woman was sprawled just a foot away from her, blood trickling from her mouth. She was close enough to see the tears that glistened in the woman's eyes, like two single snowflakes in a wild jungle, before leaking from the corners.

_I'm so sorry,_ she wanted to say, but with the gag choking her she couldn't even form the shape of the words.

"See what you've done now."

Sam closed her eyes but didn't dare shake her head again. She struggled to separate herself from it, desperate to convince herself it was their fault. They were the ones doing the hurting. _Because of you. _"No," she whimpered through her gag.

"I don't think anyone gave you permission to speak," came the song in her ear. Her eyes shot open as a foot swung out into the strange woman's stomach. The cloth rammed in her mouth muffled her cry, but the pain in the sound was unmistakable.

She'd thought there was nothing worse than the torture they inflicted on her, but now she wished it was her ribs they were breaking. She saved people's lives, she didn't hurt them, she didn't sit back and watch as someone took her punishment. She'd done that too many times before and vowed she never would again. But there was another dull thud. Wonky Nose had decided one kick wasn't enough.

Then harsh, dust soaked air was attacking her throat and she coughed, unprepared. "Now then," snarled Wonky Nose with her gag in his hand, "you're going to give us the names of the other scum you fight with." That time, Sam didn't point out that she didn't fight. It would only get the innocent stranger another kick. She closed her eyes for a second before they flew open again, terror snaking through her bones.

"Zoe Hanna," she murmured, tasting blood in her mouth. "Charlie Fairhead." She wanted to close her eyes again so she could focus, all names were fading away from her mind, the letters blurring and disappearing before her. Dylan…no, if they'd seen her details they'd know he was her next of kin. That was, if she hadn't taken him off. Lenny…Lenny…what was his surname? "Lenny Lyons," she choked, gasping through the dust that scratched at her throat. Did they believe her? She was too afraid to look at them in case they saw the lies twinkling in her gaze. If she looked away they'd assume it was shame.

"Linda Andrews." How many was that now? How many could she get away with saying? Surely they wouldn't be expecting her to name the entire regiment, but who would they be expecting her to know? "Nick Jordan." Was that a name in its own right? Should she have said Nicholas? There was no time to brood on it, she could feel the rough nails of the fingers thrust in her hair. The gun that had threatened her was pressed to the forehead of the sobbing stranger. "Tess Bateman." Crap. Was that too many women? Although they were there, there were far less of them than men. She knew all of this, knew who would play what role, the names she could trick them with, but it was all she could do to remember the surnames of her colleagues.

_Big Mac. _What the ever loving shit was his real name? "Tom…Tom…" Buchanan…No, fictional character. "Kent, Jeff Collier, Noel Garcia, Adrian Fletcher." Then there were no more. She passed hundreds of people every day, patients, colleagues, doctors in psych, midwives in maternity, the lab technicians she spoke to on the phone…all their names were gone. But the men were grinning. One of them had written down all she had said. Would they know she had lied? What if they ran the names through a computer and it came up with a page for Holby City ED? They knew she worked there. _Shit. _Why had she used their names? She should have gone with people from her old school, university friends, residents she'd worked with or patients.

But it was too late to take them back.

Wonky Nose still had a hold of the gun. It was pressed so hard into the woman's forehead that Sam could see it sinking into her flesh, digging a deep groove. She thought about springing him and knocking the gun out of his hands, but her wrists were bound and bleeding behind her and her body was weak from the blurred days of abuse. She doubted she could even take on the gagged woman.

She didn't see the slight flick of his hand. She just heard it, the bang that seemed to tear apart the entire world around her and she instinctively threw herself to the ground, but she could do nothing to protect her head with her arms so tight behind her. Something warm stuck to her face, glued her shirt to her body. For a strange, dreamy second, she was glad of it; a coldness had begun to creep beneath her skin and the warmth was welcome. But then the pieces began to merge together in one horrifying picture that she turned her face away from, refusing to see it all as it was.

Her eyes pried open against her will, as if she were under the control of a curse, to force her to face her latest victim. A vacant, empty gaze met hers. The cold stare of a dead woman.

"I told you," she whimpered, because nothing else would come out.

Wonky Nose flicked on the safety and tucked the gun into his belt. "I know," he said, matter of fact. "But now you know what you do." She heard nothing past those words. She thought she felt a touch and there was an awful, ragged scream coming from somewhere vague, and then she was tumbling back across the dirt floor, her fall blocked by her hands that she hadn't even felt being released. They were soaked in blood.

The terrible wail continued, not stopping even when she heard the familiar slam and the light was gone, replaced by the ever present darkness that was almost becoming her friend. The bad things only happened when the light came. Then there were words forming in the cries, words in her own voice that she hardly recognised. She fought of the hands that grappled against her, the violent, cruel fists that had stripped the innocence of the world from all around her. She had to be quiet, she couldn't make a sound, not even a whimper. Nothing to let him know she was there…

_She crushed her tiny body as small as it would go against the wall, shrinking herself down with the childish faith that if she couldn't see him he couldn't see her. She pressed her hands as hard as she could to her ears, wishing she could hum a tune to block out the sounds too. Her head hurt from being thrown behind the sofa, but she knew her mummy hadn't meant it. She never meant to hurt her. But he'd come so suddenly and there had been no time to run upstairs. _

_She could hear thumps and muffled screams and she knew what they meant, even though she never looked. She'd peeked once and the scene had frozen her gaze so she hadn't been able to draw it away until he'd swung around and spotted her, then he'd run up the stairs and dragged her back to her room by a hunk of hair. Her mother's blood had still been on his hands. Sam wanted to put her thumb in her mouth, because that always comforted her when her mum couldn't, but they were on her ears and if she took them away she'd be able to hear the cracks. _

_Sam's teeth sank into her knee, a learned attempt to muffle her own sobs. Tears were stinging her eyes and she knew it would be worse if he found her now. He always hated it when she cried. He said only weak people cried, only stupid little girls. She didn't want him to think she was stupid and she was more than a little girl. She was nearly eight. _

_Then there was another scream, one louder than the others and she heard the shrill cry, "No, please! What about Sammy?" and she wanted so much to jump out from her hiding place and stop him doing whatever it was, because she had never heard her strong, brave, invincible mother sound so scared, but she'd told her to stay. _Whatever you hear, Sammy, you stay there, _she'd said before her blank face had vanished from view. But she'd said her name, and she never did that while he was hurting her. She liked to think that if no one mentioned her, he'd forget they had a daughter and Sam would be safe. _

_His reply was lost to screams and Sam pressed her hands so hard over her ears that her skull ached, but she could still hear them. "Sammy!" was the last shriek she heard from her mother before she couldn't hear anything else, not even when she pried her hands from her head and listened very hard. _

_Then she finally dared peek her head around the corner of the sofa, her hands bunching her top for something to cling to and wishing she had her loyal, battered Winnie the Pooh to hug. The first thing she saw was blood, lots of it. She hadn't seen that much since she'd fallen off the swings and sliced her arm wide open on a broken bottle. Then, her mother had pressed a cloth to the wound and made her hold it there as tight as she could while she drove her to the hospital. _

_But Sam couldn't see anything now. She thought there might be something in the kitchen, but she didn't want to go where he might be. He'd stop her if he found her and she had to help her mum like she always helped her. Shrugging off her own jacket, Sam knelt beside her body and looked for the place the most blood was coming from. Her tummy, she realised. There was a lot of red there. She pressed her jacket to the torn material and struggled to remember what she had to do next. _

_Her mum had driven her to the hospital, but Sam didn't know how. She'd have to make the hospital come to them. Her mum had told her once that in an emergency she had to press 9 three times and tell the person on the other end what was happening. But the phone was in the hall and she couldn't bring it to the living room. She chewed on her lip for almost a full minute before she let go of her jacket and ran, skidding to a halt beside the phone and picking it up so fast she almost dropped it again. _

_She could hear him storming around upstairs. _

_It was a nice lady on the other end. She sounded like her mother. Sam told her that her mum was bleeding and there was a lot of it and she thought about adding that she was scared of the man still in the house, but she didn't. He'd already warned her not to tell. _

_She dropped the phone as soon as she had finished explaining where she lived and ran back to her mum's side to put the jacket back on. She didn't hear the lady on the other end telling her to stay on the phone. _

_But she did hear the creak of the stairs and she was suddenly very cold without her jacket. _

_Then she heard her name much louder than it should be for the second time that day, but that time it was angry. "Sammy!" he roared before she felt herself being hauled into the air and the jacket slipped away from her mother's tummy, but he wouldn't put her back down and when she screamed he shook her, harder and harder until she felt her brain rattling inside her skull and there was a roaring that wasn't his voice in her head. The sounds blurred together, his rage, her screams, the roaring, and then a banging, voices that shouted and then all she could hear was the sound in her head as she tumbled, suddenly and so fast, towards the pool of her mother's blood. _

**I really appreciate the reviews for the last chapter, I wasn't expecting so many!**

**I meant to get this up last night, but then I ended up consuming Christmas themed chocolate in the pub whilst reminiscing about my schooldays (because I am oh so old) before going for a McDonald's happy meal in the middle of the night, so writing fell by the wayside. **


	7. Chapter 7

"I lived with my mother's sister until I went to university. Everyone thought it was wonderful of her to take me in, she was barely more than a kid herself, but she made it clear that all she was giving me was a place to stay. I wasn't to come to her for anything unless I was on death's door, and maybe not even then. She had her life and I wasn't going to wreck it, but my mother had always protected her so she settled the debt she'd never repaid while her sister was alive by keeping me out of foster care."

Sam knew as soon as the story had emerged from her bruised, cracked lips that her mind was closing down. Because she had never even told Dylan. When the subject of her parents had inevitably come up she'd dismissed his grumbles that he should probably meet them before marrying their daughter with a harsh, closed off statement that they were both dead. He had never asked for the details, and it was one of the reasons she said yes to begin with. He would not insist on knowing everything about her.

And there in the dark she'd grown so used to, the threads of the story finally weaved themselves into the mind of another. One she barely knew and whose face she had still not seen in the shimmering light of the midday sun, or stood beside in the sprinkling shower of dust that bathed the roads. And yet he knew the darkest crevice of her mind: the story of Sammy's death. No one had called her that after the name had been burned with the breath of a demon. Anyone who tried only did once.

Almost anyone.

"My wife and I," Leo replied, "had four other babies before our son and daughters. The first two we lost at nine weeks. The third was at twenty eight. The fourth was an ectopic. Finally, we adopted our eldest and then my wife fell pregnant with the twins. She told me in one quick breath over breakfast on the morning of her twelfth week and I went with her to the first scan that day. Other than doctor's appointments, the pregnancy was not acknowledged. We didn't tell anyone, we didn't discuss names or buy cots and clothes, we didn't even brush our hands across her stomach as we had done with the others. We thought it we didn't mention it, then it wasn't real and what wasn't real couldn't be taken."

It was far from a comforting story, but the muscles that had tensed into a stone sculpture loosened. It relaxed her, as Leo knew it would. Not because she wasn't alone in her suffering, but because she no longer had to be ashamed of giving him that part of herself that she allowed no one else to even glimpse. She didn't have to shy away from his gaze after stripping herself down and turning on all the lights so it blazed on every paw of her exposed body, because now he stood beside her in the same state.

"And now you have your family," she murmured to the ceiling, but the words didn't cast the spell of hope that they were supposed to. The problem, much like with Leo's wife, was inside her. Leo had struggled to find his because of a medical problem; a medical problem that had a solution. There wasn't a drug to take or a form to fill that was going to give her what she'd never had. There was a badness that lived in her, one that had been traced beneath her skin with the gentle caresses of a father that could turn into violent thumps with a single gleam.

But the map her father had drawn in her mother's blood had ended when he stopped shedding it. And it was her who had continued to walk without cleaning the souls of her feet. It was her who had let the trail stalk her through the bends of her own map, it was her who had left it so long that the blood had stained her skin.

Becoming a doctor had been an easy decision, made ever since her sixth birthday when her father had thrown the glass plate that had held her cake at his beaming daughter. The nurse at the hospital had cleaned the blood away and picked out the shards and stitched it with a smile and Sam had watched in awe as the jagged edges of the wound knitted together and the scar faded in time until the skin was smooth and the colour blended with the rest of her as if it had never been there at all.

…

Zoe sighed and buried her head in her hands, allowing her hair to fall forwards and shield them from the eyes of her staff. She didn't need them to know that their clinical lead was letting a few rude patients and a bad day in Resus get to her. But a young boy who had been jumped by a gang of bullies had been rushed in and she hadn't been able to look at his battered body without imagining his injuries on her once colleague. She knew she shouldn't, but how did you stop yourself from getting emotionally attached when any number of the horrific injuries she saw each day could be being inflicted upon her friend at that very moment?

But Sam had been gone for more than three months and missing for thirty seven days, and no one even seemed to remember that she had existed at all. Tom had forgotten he once lolled on the sofa while she made herself coffee and cheekily demanded that 'his woman' make him one too. Jeff had forgotten how he'd flung his arm around her and called her 'princess' in an attempt to charm her to the pub across the road and Dixie, too, had forgotten the bossy, arrogant woman who had grinned as she climbed out of the wreckage of the ambulance before she'd even officially started on the job.

Or at least they never spoke of her. But what was there to say other than cruel speculation? Not one of them dared to ask Dylan if he had heard anything. For over a month he had barricaded himself in CDU, working until Zoe sent him home under the threat of suspension and then returning again just a few hours later with rings under his eyes and crumpled clothes that no longer fit. She could be sure at least that he wasn't drinking again, making excuses to speak to him each day so she could sniff out any traces.

With another sigh, Zoe took her head out of her hands and returned her focus to the medical records of the beaten boy in Resus. He'd been in before, she saw, for a fractured distal radius. School yard fight, it seemed. She'd have to address the parents about the clear bullying issue their son was having. That was if they were willing to listen. It was alarming how many parents were more than willing to dress up their child's suffering as 'kids being kids', too afraid to admit what they had been missing for so long.

She flicked the folder shut and left it on the desk, heading towards the exit for a much needed smoke. She passed a small huddle of nurses on their break, laughing over something Zoe had missed, the kind of free, helpless laughter of someone without anything to stop it. Sam had talked one of them through a bad break up, even inviting her out for after work drinks, despite none of the others having ever spoken to her.

The outside of the hospital was as busy as ever, anxious relatives, furious spouses, incoming ambulances, paramedics trying to take a break, stray patients all milled around the grounds. It looked like a very strange day care centre. But one person who looked as out of place as she felt was the lone, hunched shape on the only bench in the little patch of garden designed for grieving patients and she almost smiled. There was at least one person who hadn't forgotten about Sam.

Zoe sat down in the space beside Dylan as she exhaled the first puff of smoke, but apart from a slight flicker of eyes in her direction, he did not acknowledge her presence. For once she didn't mind his silence. Everyone else was so loud with their laughter and banter, their unwarranted panics about missing files and a too busy waiting room.

"I shouted at her," she admitted, surprised when the tiredness that she felt was present in her tone She thought she'd mastered the trick of keeping it out. "On her last day, we argued."

Dylan didn't ask who Zoe was talking about, as if saying her name would curse it and seal her fate. "So? I shouted at her too, I find it's difficult not to." Far more reassuringly in character, Zoe noted, Dylan's tone expressed not a note of regret at one of his final exchanges with his ex-wife. She wished she could have the same flippant attitude, but her last words to the girl just would not stop replying themselves, resounding like her mother's voice nagging her again and again that if she didn't take her coat off she wouldn't feel the benefit of it when she went outside.

"I know," she sighed, gazing at the leaves woven around the tiny wooden fence. "We used to argue all the time, but she didn't deserve it. I was frustrated and took it out on her. I meant to find her and apologise, but she'd already left and didn't answer when I phoned her. I knew I wouldn't see her for a while because she was going back to Afghanistan, but I always thought we'd get her back."

"We will!" Dylan's voice was sharper suddenly, angry and Zoe recoiled slightly, startled. "Sam is many things. She's reckless and irresponsible and often downright foolish, but she's also very resilient. Whatever-" there was the smallest break in his voice, like a hairline crack in a china mug, "whatever they're doing to her, she will fight it."

He didn't voice the other niggling thought in his mind. That she'd fight too hard, do something stupid and reckless. He could only pray that her survival instincts were stronger than her need for a kick.

…

By the third time Sam was dragged upstairs to the room with the boy whose name she did not ask for, they had set into a rhythm. She would hit at the walls and floor, shout out, maybe even cry a bit while he kept his distance and did his best to mentally distract himself. Each time they did it, he looked less and less distressed by her cries that eased every time. If it were real, she would have learned by then that no one would come if she pleaded.

The breaks between water were too long and the ones between food dragged further. But it was enough, just about enough, to keep them alive. Alert enough to answer questions, but too weak to fight. But she grew used to the constant pounding in her head that was a mixture of the blows it took and the deprivation of water. She grew used to the grime that coated her and stopped being tempted to use to little drink they received to wash. She even grew used to the dark, because it was when it surrounded her that she was safe with Leo and the entire series of _Harry Potter _tucked into his memory.

But what she couldn't grow used to was the helplessness. She was used to doing something. Action Sam. But when they came, there were so many of them, and she was too weak. Too weak, and too pathetic; just like she had been when she'd cowered behind the sofa as her mother was murdered just feet away.

She'd fought in the beginning. She'd broken one of her captor's noses with the palm of her hand as he bundled her into a truck. She'd spat at the man who'd tried to turn her into his whore. She'd raised her hand to the mysterious figure flung into the cell with her who became a friend. But she had not done enough. She had failed to save either one of them, while the body count in her name grew into a mounting sea that would soon drown her.

**I think I'm spending too much time alone writing. There's a spider on my wall and I've named it Hodgins.**

**So that was the first proper trip to the ED. I shan't be doing a lot of them and only if I actually think of something to happen. And it's not that everyone's forgotten all about Sam, more that there's nothing they can do about it so they have to carry on and do their jobs. **

**I love hearing what you all think and I appreciate all the anon reviews too, even if I can't reply to those. **


	8. Chapter 8

Sam stood with her arms crossed across her ribcage, her fists balled so hard that she could feel the crescent moon grooves being embedded into her palms, as if the stance would be the only physical barrier she needed to protect herself. The fingers of her right hand bunched around her sleeve which caught in the glow of the burning sunlight reaching the shut off room through the slimmest gap in the wooden boards that plastered the windows. It seemed the whole house was that way, split off from the world, trapping out any beauty that tried to slip through.

She almost missed the dust that stained her uniform. She missed the clothes themselves, the status, identity and authority they gave her. She missed the look of relief in people's eyes when they saw the medical symbol and the same feeling in her own heart when their life was stabilised in her hands. She missed the heart pumping adrenaline of leaping off a helicopter with only ten minutes until she had to be back on it. It was paced, it was rushed, it was exhilarating.

In the basement of that stone house she did nothing but wait for them to come and drag her into a new hell. There, she was an animal, a monster in their eyes. One who killed, not saved, one who deserved the torture and agony. There was no spark on their faces when they saw her, but a sneer of hatred. And the hours spent in the swallowing darkness were terrifyingly endless and dredging the soul from her body.

Leo had mentioned a monster that could suck the soul from your body in his story the previous night, stories that he still insisted on recounting to her, despite her protests that she was about twenty years too old. He continued to tell them with gusto while Sam took advantage of the fact that he couldn't see her eyes rolling in the dark. They were on the third book now, he told her, his son's favourite. Despite the cheerful tone when he'd told her, she still felt a horrible jolt whenever he mentioned his family. It was her job to give people back to their families, safe and in one piece.

But Leo was downstairs in the locked basement and she was stood, rigid and defiant under all eight eyes of her captors. She unclenched her left fist and pressed the palm of her hand against her rib cage, holding her shirt against her body in silent refusal. A tin bathtub stood beside her with soft tendrils of steam rising from the gently rippling water. The sight of it set a burning longing inside her to reach in and scoop it into her hands, fling it over her parched, aching body, dunk her whole head inside and drink until the blades of thirst no longer scratched her throat when she swallowed.

One of the men stroked the handle of a gun as he watched her, a smirk dancing on the corners of his mouth. "Get in," he said, as if they were a part of an exciting game. Sam's front tooth sliced through her bottom lip and she tasted iron as a trickle of crimson dribbled down her chin. She wanted to shake her head and refuse, she wanted to spit into every one of their leering expressions and dunk them underwater one by one until the bubbles stopped. But she'd been taught to obey. _Do everything they tell you, _they'd told her in training. _Don't resist and don't back talk. Don't try to be bold. _And now it wasn't only her own life they dangled in front of her.

Slowly, as if she were hanging her own noose around her neck, she uncurled her fist, releasing her shirt and slid her hands along her body to the hem. She didn't look at any of them as she undressed, feeling the shame creeping further and further over her with each slip that was removed until she was down to her underwear and drowning in it. As she peeled the last shreds of clothing from her dirt streaked, battered body she lifted her head and looked the man in front of her square in the eye. It was the boy. He flushed and looked away, kicking the ground with his uncovered toes.

Her arms snaked across her body to shield the worst of her exposure with her arms, but they laughed and told her not to be a spoil sport, now she had done it, she had to _share. _Snapping her gaze away from the top of the boy's head she leapt into the water with a splash, sinking beneath the hot water with an unexpected rush of pleasure. Even with an audience, the wetness felt so glorious against her wasteland that she sank further beneath it, but it was only deep enough to come to her waist.

Determined not to let them win by revealing her shame, Sam kept her gaze focused on the wall directly in front of her, her expression blazing. She tried to imagine them away, but she had never been good at playing pretend and it was impossible with the wolf whistles splitting the silence any time it dared fall. So she focused on getting herself clean. She had no desire to make herself presentable for the charade she knew she was going to be forced to endure with the boy whose name she refused to ask for, but she did want to shift some of the grime she'd collected from weeks in her prison.

Sam had never been self-conscious about her body. By the time she had been old enough to notice the size of the paws on her skin, the exact shade of her hair or the size of her waist she'd been running for more than a year and part of the army cadets for five months. She was in shape and she couldn't fail to notice the jealous glares of the other girls in her year and the suggestive ones of the boys. She had barely noticed her own figure, but now she saw the bones protruding from her skin, the consequence of starvation. She saw the sickly pallor from weeks without a splash of the sun. She saw the colour that bloomed across her skin, a multitude of blues, blacks and purples, crimson slashes and grey smears.

Absurdly, she was ashamed. And that shame made her want to kick the pistol out of the twitching hand of her captor and put a bullet through each of their heads. She might just allow the kid who was barely old enough to grow stubble a concussion with the butt. She continued to imagine it as she soaped and scrubbed the rest of her body clean, picturing, as one man dared flick out a hand for a touch, the bleeding hole in his head where his sexual desires were kept.

…

When the door clanged shut that time Sam didn't even notice the darkness. She felt it insidshut that tiem,tiem, Sam didn'e her, snaking like a vine that pierced her with a mind numbing fear with every thorn. She clasped her knees to her chest, hugging herself and wishing it was her mother, who she still remembered as the woman who could do anything. She wanted to reach for Leo, the only person there and one who she would not see again when the hour was up, but still something pulled her back. A niggling fear at the back of her mind that ludicrously convinced her that it was still a danger, that he was somehow going to reach into her chest and wrench out her heart.

"At least you'll get the bathroom to yourself," Leo whispered, but she still heard the choke in his voice, as if someone were pressing down on his windpipe and only one word in the feeble joke screamed itself inside her head.

"Me?" She shook her head, although the action could barely be seen through the darkness, but it brought her the same comfort as holding her own knees. If she held herself, she couldn't be hurt, if she refused to listen, neither could he.

"You're young. You have your whole life ahead of you and all that jazz." That time even Dylan would have heard the tremble. He was terrified, but she was finally going to become the doctor she was supposed to be and save him.

"You have a family," she pointed out. "A wife and kids. A son that's still young enough to need his dad to tuck him in at night. He's going to want you to finish that book." She wanted to hear the end of the story too. Without wanting to she had become hooked on what happened to a little boy wizard, but she knew she never would if he wasn't there to tell it to her. She never had read the end of _The House at Pooh Corner _after her mum died. The words sounded empty and dead inside her head, and in her own stumbling voice they refused to come to life. The characters stayed confined inside the pages, just squiggles on paper.

Leo did not argue back and Sam could hear his breath hard and strained. He was holding back his tears, but whether they came through fear for himself or her she didn't know. But she was going to win if she hadn't already. A man with a family, people who would be say vigil by the phone waiting for the call that would tell them he was found, someone who would go through his home, each one of his possessions in hope of a hint they were never going to find, someone who would root through the same things to put each one back in place ready for him to come home. He was not going to die in her place.

"You're the same age as my eldest daughter." All traces of humour were gone from his voice and Sam's confidence at winning him to her own side faltered. In his eyes there was no differentiation right then between her and his own child. He would strangle the man that came to claim their victim with his own weakened hands before he let him take her.

"Yes. And I still need my parents now. I needed them when I had to walk down the aisle alone and when there was no one to help me chose my wedding dress, even more when I was signing divorce papers by the age of 26. Your daughter needs you and so does your wife, the rest of your children and everyone else in that family you surprised so much when your wife had the babies that no one knew were coming."

She'd had to do a lot of convincing in her life. Convincing her mother that she would be just fine to cross the road alone, convincing her father to come home from the pub to help her find bugs in the dark for her science homework, convincing her aunt to come to just one parents' night so the kids at school wouldn't spit cruel lines about little orphan Sam. Later, convincing professors to give her extensions and men at bars that she meant no, then patients who refused to tell the truth and relatives who refused to see it. She'd convinced to save lives, she'd convinced to save herself, but never had she felt such a desperate yearning to do it right.

She'd hardly been able to do any good in her life, even saving patients' lives was nothing that couldn't have been done by any other doctor, but perhaps she would be able to correct something in her death.

"And what about the people that need you?"

Sam shook her head and bit back a humourless laugh. "There isn't anyone," she said, bluntly. "I'm divorced and I turn down after work drinks every night. No one's going to be praying that I make it home safely. Neither one of our lives are worth more than the other, but the lives of all of those people who are praying for you are worth more than mine."

Their time to argue vanished as the door was swung open again, sounding thousands of times louder than each other time as it slammed into the wall behind.

"It's me," Sam declared, jumping to her feet before Leo could step in. She swallowed, stumbling forwards on legs that trembled despite the strength of her voice. "You can have me." The man with the wonky nose grinned at her, but there was no warmth to be seen.

"I had hoped it would be," he said, gleefully and Sam hated that she had given him that satisfaction and it was only announcing her own death sentence that made her think of all the things she was going to miss after all. The soaring adrenaline as she free wheeled down the steepest hill she could find with her arms outstretched, the burst of frustration when she argued with Dylan, the burning of the first sip of tea in the morning, or the much needed coffee glugged on a night shift. Even the grit that embedded itself into her eyes during the early hours of the same shift that meant the banter that came with the unity of being the poor souls to draw the short straw was soon to follow with the doctors that worked by her side.

Sam drew a gulp of air and pushed it away; there was no good in thinking about it now. But she felt herself stumble in the next second, shoved to one side and hands were reaching towards Leo instead, struck dumb by her sacrifice. "I'm glad you made the right decision." Wonky Nose gave her a wink, but she stared straight through him at the man, her friend, being dragged out of the cell behind him.

It was hot in the cell. Too hot. Panic burned through her, her breath trapped inside her chest. "No, it's me, it's me, it's me," she said the words over and over until they stumbled into each other, becoming one long sound that disappeared into the darkness that consumed everything in it. She lunged for the men whose sharp fingers twisted Leo's arms behind his back, but her own touch had hardly skimmed them before something shoved her head into the stone wall beside her and she dropped, the light streaming into the barren cell vanishing with everything else she knew.

**I apologise for any mistakes in this, but I wanted to get it up. I appreciate everyone's continued feedback. I realise I've a very mean person, taking away all that was keeping Sam sane, but anyone familiar with my writing will be used to that by now. **


	9. Chapter 9

**For a start I'm very sorry this took so long. My motivation died and then so did my charger so even when my muse came back, I couldn't do anything to appease it. Then I went away for a few days so basically everything that could have happened to delay this story happened. (Also it was my slacking, not gonna lie). But it shouldn't take so long in future. **

Blood bubbled under her fingernails as Sam lashed at the face of the man whose fingers twisted through her hair. He howled in both pain and rage and the hand holding her loosened, sending her tumbling to the hard ground. The impact sent pain shooting right down to her bones. She bit down so hard on her lip that the foul taste of blood seeped into her mouth. She swallowed rather than spat, hopelessly grappling with that last shred of her dignity.

She saw the foot swing towards her, but didn't have the energy to even curl herself into a ball before it thudded into the concave rock her stomach had become, wasted like the core of an apple from weeks of starvation. She stared into the pooled shaft of light that crept in through the open door, wondering if she welcomed or dreaded it. She'd been petrified of the dark since her father had locked her in the closet with the corpse of their cat and told her that if she ever, ever breathed a word about him, she'd be taken away and shut in darkness for far longer than the night he left her to scream. But no matter how much the dark froze her in a trap of her own fear, she knew it was when the light came that she was in danger.

The light was here now.

More hands seized her, clasping her arms, her hair, one crushing her jaw. They dragged her to her feet and out of the safety of the darkness. She struggled, although all of her training was screaming at her not to. Struggling in a fight you couldn't win would only get you more hurt, but Sam was past caring about the damage they could do to her body. She had not lied to Leo. No one would care did she not step of the plane back in London. Her fight came from the small spark from the embers of a dying fire that would not let them win.

Relief struck her so strongly when they threw her down that she would have fallen to the floor had she not already been collapsed on it. They had led her to the room she met with the boy; the young one who was not quite a friend, but closer than an enemy.

Sam pulled herself to her feet with the solidarity of the wall as soon as they left them alone. She was too tired to scream, but they no longer expected it. She'd let her cries grow weaker and weaker until they'd faded altogether, sucked into the void that she was becoming.

That time, something was different. It was like waking up to find someone had crept inside your bedroom in the night and painted the walls just one shade darker. Most people probably wouldn't even notice, putting it down to a cloudy day if they did, but it was still there, a subtle change that would have you searching through your things, sure that something was missing because the world was not quite on kilter.

The boy pulled something out from behind his back. A plate of her usual stale bread, but on the side of the plate, still in her vision but placed as if it had no real importance, were six squares of chocolate. Sam had never indulged in too many sweet snacks, preferring to keep her fitness for her active life, but the hunger that gnawed so deeply inside her stomach that it had begun to chew at her muscles wailed at the sight. Moisture threatened to drown her, filling her mouth until it almost trapped the air in her lungs.

"You can have it," said the boy, placing it down on the floorboards in front of her. Sam had to hold herself back from pouncing on it right away. She'd spent a long drag in the darkness without food. Another animal stirred inside her when he placed a tall glass of water beside it. Her tongue slicked over her cracked lips. "_If_ you fuck me."

Shock moulded her to the spot, freezing even the beating of her heart in a cold grip. But madly, irrationally, it was the word that she reacted to. It sounded foreign coming from the mouth of the boy she'd come to see as innocent, a victim almost as much as she was, born into a family he was not a part of and dragged into a life he could not live. The crazy urge to reprimand him on his language struck her suddenly, and she almost did, because she was wordless of any other way to respond.

Instead, she did something even more unexpected. She laughed. The sound filled the darkest corners of the room, but rather than banishing the shadows that lay within them, it made them grow. They crept along the lightly dusted floor, growing like vines along the walls. Or maybe that was just her vision fading. She scrunched her eyes shut and continued to laugh, not stopping until she felt the slap that knocked her into the wall to be consumed by the shadows.

…

On the fringes of her consciousness, the strangeness of her dream began to float away until she could barely grasp the outline. The boy had been involved, he had asked her…asked her…but the last of the details slipped into the oblivion of her memory before she could recall them. But there was something strange about the real world too. She prised her lids apart a crack to see she had not been wrong. It _was _too light. She was not in her cell. She was not even downstairs. The window on the far wall had no ground lurking beneath it.

She was in the room with the boy. The information zapped her into complete consciousness as the details of the dream flooded in. He'd asked, no, _told¸_ her to have sex with him. In return for food; food he didn't have to tell her she'd not be allowed until she did. He'd said fuck. She'd laughed. And it had been horribly and terrifyingly real. The food was still there, and so was the glass of water, standing quivering and tall beside its plastic company.

Her muscles shot into a rigid stillness as she felt a touch ghost along her hair, running down to her neck. She shivered and the tension evaporated, replaced by scraping nails, a balled fist flying towards his temple, a knee wedged into this groin. Then he was fighting back with a grip around her jugular. She choked. Her arms collapsed at her sides, dead weights on either side of her body, knuckles dragging along the floor. The fight was over in mere seconds and a wave of self-loathing crippled her defences. Crystals pricked in the corners of her bulging eyes.

What did her training mean when she couldn't fight off someone barely old enough to grow a beard?

_You're hurt, _the rational commander barked. _You're malnourished, dehydrated, concussed, exhausted. That is not weakness. Do not believe they have beaten you. _

Never believe you have lost.

Sam's knee jerked up again, thrusting into his groin as it had done before and he crumpled. She fell with him, gasping, coughing, her hands flying to her throat as the black spots that had taunted her faded. The colours seeped back into the room. She rolled onto her feet before she was ready and the walls swayed.

The boy giggled.

"You'll sleep with me soon," he simpered, then he swept the food and water into each hand and was gone, leaving Sam with tight fists and stance spaced, poised for a fight that was not to come.

…

**This was a little shorter, but I wanted to get it up because I'd already made you all wait so long. **


	10. Chapter 10

**I'm glad I don't seem to have lost any of you to the void of abandoned fan fictions. I do not plan to abandon this and I have a rough idea of where I'm going with it, so that bodes well. Thanks for all of your great reviews, and for not shouting at me for being such a fail. **

The hunger did not rest in her stomach.

She had long since grown used to the emptiness, before they'd taken food from her altogether and sentenced her to decide her own slow suicide. She'd even grown used to the gnawing ache that shredded her innards. The hurt was no worse than the pain in the rest of her body, certainly not than the thudding drums inside her head that pounded throughout the hours so she hardly slept at all.

The true hunger was in her mind.

It was the way she imagined the smell of cooking wafting into her basement cell. Bacon sizzling in the morning, waking her from a dreamless sleep and luring her from the comfort of the blankets that cuddled her, moulding perfectly into her figure. The spices that burned her eyes when she finally sat down to eat and the sweetness of apples ripe in the orchard.

On one of her father's sober days, he'd driven them to one where apples grew so large that she could not hold one in her hands. He stood on his tip toes to pluck them from the trees and sent her scrambling up the branches for the ones he couldn't reach. She did not think of refusing. They'd collected the fruit in the wicker basket her mother had taken when she left home, woven together by her own grandmother and when it could hold no more, they'd taken them home to bake into more pies than they had the stomachs for.

Sam had crunched into one in the backseat of the car, licking the juice running down her wrist before it could stain her clothes. She'd even chewed the core, not willing to waste a single bite of the memory.

Once the images in her head became memories, the taste crept into her mouth, teasing her with the illusion. If there was enough moisture, she was sure it would water: the gift of sweetness in a candy wrapped at the bottom of a pocket, a surprise to lift the gulfing darkness of a day; the burst of taste at the sherbet centre. She longed even for the two minute microwave noodles that she usually zapped for herself after a tiring shift when she had no energy to prepare anything healthier.

Then the real scents came. They would bring something to her every day, sending the boy with a steaming plate of meals that grew in size and wonder by the day. Each time she gave him one simple shake of the head that had come to be their only communication, he would eat every bite in front of her, licking the plate clean of gravy and sauces she could not even name. She had no idea how they got the food to a place so riddled with poverty, but she did not care to question it.

The physical pain set in somewhere during the fitful hours of sleep she drifted in and out of, starting as a sharp ache in her stomach, moving up to pound at her chest and finally becoming a bone deep weakness along every inch of her body. She shook at first, the glucose so low in her bloodstream that it made her dizzy and sick, but that was in the beginning and she'd never felt hunger until the endless days in the cell.

Finally, it was a rabid animal that took over her body, lunging for the food as the boy walked through the door with it. She did not look up at the cocky smirk turning his lips to a snarl, she didn't even look at what was on the plate, she just leapt, but he did too, spinning out of her reach as if he'd read her mind a split second before she moved and it was not her own voice that spoke, but an empty, restless rasp that issued from a depth of her she'd never known.

"I'll do it. Please."

He set the plate down behind him and barred it with his body. There was a time when Sam would have been able to take him down with a single swing, but she knew that time had passed long before they'd began to waste her. She attacked him with a frenzy, tearing the clothes from his body because she knew what waited as a reward. Her own seemed to fall away with a simple brush of his hand, barely hanging on to the wasted flesh that clung to the surface of her bones.

She let his hands paw her without touching him and when he did not have her lips caught between his, she turned away from the putrid stench of his breath that she knew would linger on her skin for longer than her own. His hands carved out the good in her bones and left rancid trash behind and his lips sucked the soul from her body. Then it was her turn, although she was not in control of her own hands. He moved them for her, rubbing them against his penis until it was a hard bulge in her fist.

When he was done there was nothing left to feed but an empty film canister with all the life in the moments that had once been captured inside it drained. But there was a life in the animal as it fell on the food, unable to realise the rationality of eating slow enough to make it last, to ensure she didn't throw it all back up again within the hour. She ate with a craze and it was only when the last drop of sauce was licked from the plate that she realised it had not filled a single gap inside her.

She was gaping, huge and empty, a corpse like the lives she failed to save and the boy laughed as if he knew and carried the plate away to the land beyond the door.

…

The food stayed in her stomach, but it hurt. The ache gave way to a tearing agony that split a wail into the dusty walls enclosing her. And it was pain that she welcomed because it proved she was more than a corpse. She tore at her arms to encourage it, using her nails to peel away skin and then attack the flesh underneath, tearing so deep that she was almost surprised not to see her bones scattered along the floor.

Perhaps she was hallucinating, or perhaps she was dreaming in hell.

Either way the pain was raw, but somehow she was still numb.

She let him shred another piece of her soul each day, selling out her body in exchange for sustenance she did not want, but somehow could not refuse.

She wanted to let the starvation kill her, because then there was a part of her that would have won. They wanted her to die on their terms, when they were done stretching out her life and torturing her, they would sink a bullet into her brain. They starved her because they knew she would fall. Her instinct to survive would take over any stubborn notion she had and bend her to their will, but if she was just strong enough to hold out, she could win and it would all be over.

Or at least, she would not lose.

But then the boy would come again and she'd be waiting and ready with her clothes ad crumpled heap at her feet, ever dustier and more grubby each time she pulled them back onto her body and they moved as fluid against her weightless body as waves licking the sand.

After a while she started to close her eyes and imagine she was someone else. Or she was. Sometimes she went somewhere else entirely and let him lead them both, relinquishing control because that way she did not have to focus. If she let go, the memories would not be films inside her head, played over and over again on an agonising loop in the hours he was gone. If she let go, all she would have later was the faint impression of walking Dervla along the beach with Dylan or the hushed whisper of her mother's voice as she dragged her on an adventure when the sun was still hiding behind the moon.

And finally the days came back to her, time moving in again as if it had never been driven away by crazed hunger and along with the rising and setting of the sun she could not see.

**Something a little different there, but hopefully satisfying all the same. **


	11. Chapter 11

**Sorry this took so long, I thought it had only been like 2 weeks, the looked at the date and saw I hadn't updated in a month. I also found a surprise social life. **

**I really do appreciate all of my reviewers, even if I do seem to have fallen out of the habit of personal replies recently. The first part is for the person that asked for another visit to the ED folks. I will warn you now that I am not a Sam/Tom shipper (not going into my very long list of reasons) but this shall not be a bitter rant, you just won't get to read a lot of Tom pining for his dear lost love at a window with rain lashing upon it. **

Tom's mouth dipped towards the stranger's ear, murmuring something only the two of them could hear before a high pitched giggle bubbled at the girl's lips. Tom hosted his own smirk and raised his glass to his lips to take another cold sip.

The flames that had licked Dylan's throat since his ex-wife had taken her final steps out of the hospital and his life burned so intensely that he could almost feel blisters forming as he sucked in another unwanted breath of air.

Somewhere inside him, another fire raged. This one he wished would coil out of him and wrap itself around the cocky bastard still chatting up the probably-still-a-teenager at the bar. Of course neither of them had said a word to him, but he'd seen the glances exchanged between Tom and Sam. Ever since they'd been thrown together in the festival that had ended in such disaster. He'd noticed the lingering fingers in the other's palm whenever they handed over a file or medicine. He'd also noticed Sam's gaze following the bastard down the corridor as if he were a page three pin up.

He shouldn't have noticed, but he couldn't stop watching her, even when her eyes were latched to another.

"Not jealous are you?"

Zoe's teasing finally snapped Dylan's attention from the scene across the bar and he turned to scowl at her instead. "Don't be absurd," he growled.

She raised her eyebrows. "I'm only joking. I'd say Big Mac is more your type."

When Dylan still didn't ease his glare she gave up on the humour and nodded towards his cracked glass instead. "You might wanna let go of that before we end up having to see the same four walls we've just left."

Dylan couldn't summon the mental energy to care about the fate of the glass or his hand, but he released it, immediately feelings his fingers ache when he did. As the only person who even still acknowledged that Samantha had been around at all, he felt a begrudging affection towards her. Or at least less hostility than he did toward everyone else who laughed over pints as if they didn't feel the gaping, endless space.

He didn't even know why he was there. After work drinks had never been something he'd done before she'd left and her presence would have been his only motivation in the past. Watching everyone drink what the flames burned for at the same time as being able to taste the fumes on the tip of his tongue was almost more than he could stand without vaulting over the bar and pouring the tap into his mouth.

But somehow it had seemed more appealing than going home to a sleep that would be riddled with dreams about her.

Most of all he had hoped the rowdiness of all the alcohol and the irritating thump of the music would drown out the repeated track of their last exchange. Or more accurately, his last words to her. One in particular.

_Good. _

Good, leave me in peace. Good, go back to Hell Land and don't come back here. Good, I won't have to see you again. Good, there will be thousands of miles between us at last. Good, I can go back to pretending you don't exist. All of the silent words that had exploded in the air between them from that one simple four lettered one. He'd regretted it even then. The familiar knot of dread had tied itself inside his stomach at the first breath of the word 'Afghanistan' and that had turned into poison in his mouth that he'd spat at her, hating her for doing it to him again.

But they fought all the time. He'd snarled far more vicious things during the last months of their relationship. Foul things, things that had made him want to pick up the phone and call her during their months of separation if to do nothing more than to apologise. But the sting of her affair had still been too strong, the images of a muscled twenty something mad in uniform with his arms around his wife too strong to swallow the last of the dignity he had left. Too strong to even admit to himself that it was not a meaningless fling that had ended the relationship but merely the excuse he'd needed to walk out of the door.

A part of him had been satisfied to know he'd hurt her as much as she'd hurt him.

_(He'd told her not to come back.)_

She'd known he hadn't meant them.

She always knew.

Tom slammed his drink down on the bar with all but one lone drop still rolling along the edge of the glass and his arm snaked around the waist of the dark haired girl. Her curls almost reached her waist. It was the same length as Sam's.

Without stopping to think about it, Dylan shoved back his chair so hard that it clattered to the crooked wooden floor and stormed out after them, Zoe's protests following him all the way to the door.

He walked behind them until he was close enough to wrench Tom's shoulder so the man himself was facing him. His body tensed, geared up for a fight and then hesitated when he saw who it was, as if weighing up if he'd still need to fight. They'd been tentative friends before Sam had left again, but Dylan's glare did not hold a promise of a shared pint.

"Is it that easy for you?"

Tom's eyes darted around them, as if looking for someone else that Dylan might be talking to. "Is what?" he said slowly, confusion stitched into his features.

"Oh use whatever little bit of a brain you have."

"Sam?" Tom exclaimed, as if he'd suggested Winnie the Pooh.

"So you do remember her name then? Let's make sure we're talking about the same Sam shall we? Your girlfriend., the one who's missing in a war zone."

"Woah, you've got it wrong, mate. Me and Sam weren't together. And I'm sorry that she's gone, but there's nothing we can do from here."

Far from reassuring him, Tom's bids to do so only fuelled Dylan's anger. His hands clenched to fists at his sides, burrowing half-moon grooves into his palms as he struggled not to swing them at the younger doctor's face. The dark-haired girl was backing away, her long, painted nails falling away from Tom's shoulders. Dylan was satisfied to see the flirtatious smirk had fallen away from her lips and now she wore a scowl. Good. It was nothing more than either of them deserved.

"Yes, well you're not mature enough to actually be with anyone, are you? You're just a stupid boy who picks up one fling after another, chasing the other one down as soon as one-" he stopped, the foul word he'd never even dared to think turning the air black and sour between them, even without the sound of it.

"Dies? Because we all know she is dead, but you still watch the doors like she's gonna walk through them to-" Tom never reached the end of his sentence before Dylan's fists were scrunched into the front of his shirt and he was shoving him backwards, almost colliding with the young woman still hanging on the fringes of the scene, waiting for the fight.

His fist hadn't even landed one punch before Zoe's hands were wrapped around his wrist and on Tom's shoulder, pulling the two apart like they were school yard enemies.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she yelled, and Dylan was furious to find he was looking at him and not Tom. "Punching the living daylights out of _anyone _isn't going to keep her safe."

Dylan glared back. "Oh, really? Well that's my plan scarped."

Zoe looked as if she was going to attack _him, _but she didn't get the chance to so much as raise her voice before he'd thrown her hand from him and stormed away, the dark of the night swallowing him whole.

…

Sam didn't see them come anymore. She didn't even hear it. She felt it, like the comb in her mother's hand brushing down the length of her hair. It no longer turned into to the stench of alcohol poured into her skin at the same time as her father's fists. They only nudged their feet into her side to tell her that there was food there, or a longed for bottle of water, warmed by the scorching sun but as wonderful as the steady beeping that took over the on-going screech of a flat line.

That time, the beeping was the sound of her own heart.

They wanted her stronger, she guessed. They wanted to kill her themselves, in the right moment, in the right way. They wanted her death to mirror the millions she'd caused. They wanted her to beg. But she kept her lips clamped closed until her eyes drifted shut too. And when she did she could no longer stop the scenes from playing. It was against her training, but she'd forced all thoughts of home from her mind.

Home only reminded her of bitter words between the severed bounds of a marriage.

But when she began to float, the barriers were some of the first things to go. In their place came words twisted with ice that spiked through her heart.

"_It's a family thing, Samantha. Something _you _wouldn't understand." _

"_Don't expect me to be waiting for you when you come back."_

"_Haven't you ever wondered why everyone around you needs to drink?"_

…

_It had been an ordinary day when she realised their marriage was over, that she wouldn't be returning to their bed after a six month stint in Afghanistan. She'd be coming back to a one bedroomed flat, rented without a tour. She'd return to lie ins without a dog to jump on the bed and a carpet free from malting fur. _

_She'd return to silence. _

_The gesture was so small, so seemingly insignificant, but she knew what it meant. You're no longer a part of my life. _

_Just the simple refusal to lend her gloves in the snow had been all she needed. Not the months of rows, the vicious words, even the once near slap. Just that, those words that set her behind the same rope as everyone else. No longer the exception. No longer someone he loved. _

_Ian'd had arms that would hold her, thumbs that would wipe away her tears after a horrific day at war. He had a space on the other side of his bed and the want to roll over when there was none. He had a smile for her in the mornings and even when it was the blasts that woke them instead. _

_She'd never needed anyone, hardly let her tears show and certainly never needed a snuggle on the sofa. But her husband's growing distance had hurt so much she'd wondered if she'd be happier in a war zone, where there was the possibility she wouldn't come home. _

_She'd _known _that she wouldn't. There was no longer a home for her to return to. _

_But still, she hoped. And it was the hope that drove her into the empty space in Ian's bed. Perhaps if Dylan was faced with really losing her, he'd tell her he loved her. _

_Perhaps he would even mean it. _

Something pierced her consciousness. The tiniest creak of an opening door.

"_I wasn't always miserable." _

The whispered memory came before the other voice which was both firm and gentle together.

"Sam?"

It came with a shake, a jolt that seemed to thunder through every bone of her aching body. "C'mon I know you can hear me."

And the memory did too, the one that had been evading her in every dark moment spent in her cell. The image of a finger hovering over the mouse before she'd moved it to the cancel button instead. She'd never removed him as her next of kin, telling herself it was because she didn't have anyone else. And maybe that was true, because there had been no other name she'd wanted on the form.

He knew, and by now, through some way or another, so would everyone else.


	12. Chapter 12

**The next chapter will probably be the last. Sorry for the wait on this one, I moved house. **

"Sam?"

A bodiless voice fell between her memories, soon attached to a hand shaking her free from the tangles of images.

She kept her eyes closed, her muscles seizing with automatic terror. She forced herself not to shrink away, clinging hopelessly to the one last element of control she had. Her eyes shut tighter, as if she could will them away if she just refused to see them. But the person was persistent, shaking her harder still and hissing her name like a snake that coiled around her throat until she could hardly breathe.

Then there were more voices.

The roars of giants.

A shower of gunshots.

Without meaning to, Sam scrunched herself into a ball, hating herself with every inch smaller she became. She was trained to run into combat, not from it. But unarmed and only half alive, her only chance was in praying she wouldn't be seen. She tried to roll further into the shadows, feeling rather than seeing the bathing glow of light that had crept across the dust, but the hand on her shoulder held her to the floor.

"It's okay," said a voice made from velvet, "it's just the team."

His tone was gentle, but if hit her harder than the roars. She was not used to kindness. Not from them, hardly from anyone. When her father had been kind to her, it had been to pry out a lie her mother had told him. She'd hear the thud of his boot cracking down on her from her bedroom, where her mother thought she was safe. But no matter how hard she'd clung to her toy rabbit or the pressure she put on her ears, he always came for her in the end.

Her fingers scrambled blindly against the dirt, searching for something to use in her defence. She couldn't fight, but she was not going to lie on the floor helpless; but they only grappled with empty space and the filth that burrowed beneath her nails. Then another hand filled hers. Fingers entwined between the gaps of her own, warmth wrapping itself around skin that had been so cold.

She knew that touch.

It was one she both wanted to curl into and wrench away from. When the black creature of despair had threatened to drag her down to hell, it had held her on the right side.

But at the cost of snatching her away from the faltering grip of her husband.

She clung to it anyway, the familiarity better than even the dwindling supply of water left rolling in the dirt for her. She didn't trust it, but she'd take the comfort while it was there, even if it was nothing but a hallucination. Her training had warned her about them, but she'd barely listened, never thinking she'd be in the situation herself. She was a doctor after all, not a soldier. She was rarely in the direct line of fire. Almost never the target.

"Iain," she confirmed, opening her eyes to surprising brightness.

"All right Sam?" he grinned, like they'd done no more than brush past one another at base.

"Not real," she mumbled, but clung to his hand tighter still, wishing he was. She was tired, she was always tired, but if she slept there was a chance he wouldn't be there when she woke up again. His fingers were squeezing back, ironically pulling her from the fringes of her sanity to a world that felt sturdier, safer. "Stop stroking me," she protested, "I'm not a dog."

Iain laughed and pulled back the hand running through her hair. "And here was me thinking you might not be you anymore." He said something else, too, but it was just a noise as spots started to pattern and grow over his relaxed grin.

"None of that now, we've got some escaping to do." He tugged on the hand he was holding and Sam blinked away the patterns. Escaping? If he was a hallucination, they wouldn't be able to. The doors would still be in-tact, the men right outside.

He flung her arm around his neck and bent to sweep the other one under her legs, but she pushed him feebly away, her hand cold from his sudden absence. "I wanna walk," she told him, stubbornly, and saw him roll his eyes through the blurred brightness that scrunched her eyes. He lifted her to her feet and it was then that she saw the voices had not been bodiless, but they belonged to more men in uniform, a woman. And the boy who had bought her food with a gun trained to his chest. His hands were flung in the air and he gaped at the barrel, the colour sucked from his skin.

It was a hell of a lot to hallucinate.

But she didn't have time to wonder. Iain was half dragging her across the dust, leaving a trail from the tips of her bare feet behind them like the scattered trail of bread left so Hansel and Gretel could find their way home again. She stumbled all the way to the battered front door that had held her completely captive in its darkest depths for an age void of time. She wanted to ask Ian how long it had been, but then they were through it and the scorching, sky splitting sun burnt fires in her eyes. She twisted her face into his jacket to put them out and felt herself being lifted right into the cradle of his arms before she could protest.

It was not like she could walk without her eyes anyway.

He carried her higher and then the journey was less bumpy and doors were closing. His arms were leaving her and she didn't protest. She twisted her feet and hands to make sure she still could, squinting through the harsh flames to see the closed walls of a van around her.

She wanted to fight, scream and run, because they had taken her in the back of a van too, but she was tired and her eyes were refusing to stay open. She heard Iain's voice, fluttering with false cheer before the last of her senses left her and she was staring once again into the void of darkness.

…

_Sam pressed her back harder into the stone wall, a tinge of relief fluttering feebly through her heart as she felt the cold soak through her shirt. She stared at her crimson streaked hands until the edges blurred and then they fell out of focus altogether, flashes and snatches of scenes falling into her vision instead. _

_The smoking rubble that had been a school brimming with jittering excitement. It had only just opened. The first one for almost thirty miles, but the shouts of laughter had become wails of grief and terror as the longed for building collapsed around them. Sam had crawled through the gaps in the rubble to answer the cries of a seven year old child, ignoring the protests of the officer behind her. She'd found the child amongst the broken bodies of her classmates and the little girl she had promised life had spent the last seconds of it in the arms of the doctor who had failed her. _

_They'd saved the teacher and one child, who looked to lose his leg on top of every one of his friends. _

_No, her team had. _

_She hadn't saved anyone. _

_She carried herself on shaking, stumbling legs to the base phone, barely able to dial the numbers with the force of the tremble in her hand, but finally she tapped in the last one and the rings began in her ear, screaming as loud and ugly as the sobs of a child, begging Sam to save her. _

_He didn't pick up until the ninth ring, when the hope Sam clung to was slipping between the pieces of herself. Then it rose and fell in the same breath. "Hello?" her husband snapped, as if she'd interrupted a life-saving procedure. _

"_Dylan," she choked out, her voice strangled as the hand of the dead child closed around her throat. _

"_What is it, Samantha? I have a shift in ten minutes." _

_She pressed her lips together, burying her teeth into them until her eyes watered with pain. It was better than them stinging with tears. She opened her mouth, let out a little gasp, closed it again. There was nothing to say, no words to explain and nothing that he wanted to hear. _

"_I haven't got time for this," he snarled, confirming it, and then she only heard the constant whine of the dial tone that coiled itself around her heart and squeezed until the life and breath were seeping from her in shuddering gasps without tears. There wasn't enough left in her to cry. Despite the awful, dreadful day, she longed for another call out, more bodies to retrieve, more limbs to literally hold on with her hands as she struggled to stop the blood. She needed a bomb scare to throw herself into the centre of, a sniper's gun to stare down. _

_She needed something, anything, for the high of adrenaline. _

_Dylan thought she did it to punish him. It wasn't about revenge. When he snapped so viciously, when their arguments ended in bitter anger that she didn't deserve, putting herself in danger wasn't to hurt him. It was to prove she still could. _

_Sometimes, she did it without believing she'd see the spark of worry jolt through his cold eyes, but it was what she needed to see. To hear through his screaming at the thought of losing her that he still cared. _

_The other reason was the high. _

_Then the hand she'd longed for was on her shoulder, massaging gently where it hurt most. She closed her eyes, knowing it wasn't, it couldn't be, but imagining her husband all the same. "Sam?" It was Iain Dean, the buddy who always had her back, the one who had lifted the child's body from her arms and gently coaxed her from the rubble. _

_She turned to him with crystals in her eyelashes and a soft half-smile on her lips. "I'd never hang up on you," he vowed. _

_That was the first time that Sam considered that there was more than one way for Dylan to lose her._

**I wrote the first half of this before last night's episode aired, but the episode was useful for giving Iain a little more characterisation. I'm also not sure about Iain strictly being able to be a part of Sam's rescuse team so I'm gonna claim artistic license because I've wanted him to be since like half way through this story. **


End file.
